Netgear Hides Router Backdoor Instead of Fixing It

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in security on (#3J8)
story imageA very recent firmware analysis from the reverse engineer Eloi Vanderbeken shows that NETGEAR didn't fix the backdoor on port 32764 but instead implemented a knocking feature that is now required to unlock the service.

Summary from the slides: The knocking feature is initiated when a "packet type == 0x201" arrived at "ft_tool" that listens to the Ethernet packets. It only works with EtherType 0x8888 and the payload has to be "45d1bb339b07a6618b2114dbc0d7783e" which is the MD5-hash of the model number DGN1000. If such a packet arrives, the backdoor service /usr/bin/scfgmgr f- is launched.

Ars Technica reports :
The nature of the change, which leverages the same code as was used in the old firmware to provide administrative access over the concealed port, suggests that the backdoor is an intentional feature of the firmware and not just a mistake made in coding. "It's DELIBERATE," Vanderbecken asserted in his presentation.

(Cross posted on Soylentnews)

Re: Okay (Score: 2, Interesting)

by omoc@pipedot.org on 2014-04-25 18:07 (#168)

FreeBSD just started to implement mitigations that have been standard in OpenBSD for years. For example, ASLR or SSP, last time I checked was 2013 and FreeBSD still lacked these very simple mitigations that are even available in Windows by now. This is just utterly ridiculous.

They're just sloppy in terms of security and they also accept horrible patches just because there is some performance benefit. OpenBSD plays on an entirely different level and is my only choice for infrastructure as critical as routers.
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