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Bill_MI
Bill In Michigan
MVM
join:2001-01-03
Royal Oak, MI
TP-Link Archer C7
Linksys WRT54GS
Linksys WRT54G v4

1 edit

1 recommendation

Bill_MI to CylonRed

MVM

to CylonRed

Re: Dangerous remote Linksys 0-day root exploit discovered!

I'll do some speculation just to see how close I am...

Many of you may have noticed when you try to access your own public IP you get the router web page. Still true? My speculation is that this rule is made advantage of. It's not your LAN IP it's a public IP (that happens to be your own) so it'll get by a lot of security fixes against local addressing. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) had exploits to access local LAN addresses but this Linksys quirk is sort of an invitation.

IF that's all it is... securing your password off default would be #1. But everyone here should already know THAT, anyway.

NetFixer
From My Cold Dead Hands
Premium Member
join:2004-06-24
The Boro
Netgear CM500
Pace 5268AC
TRENDnet TEW-829DRU

NetFixer

Premium Member

said by Bill_MI:

I'll do some speculation just to see how close I am...

Many of you may have noticed when you try to access your own public IP you get the router web page. Still true? My speculation is that this rule is made advantage of. It's not your LAN IP it's a public IP (that happens to be your own) so it'll get by a lot of security fixes against local addressing. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) had exploits to access local LAN addresses but this Linksys quirk is sort of an invitation.

IF that's all it is... securing your password off default would be #1. But everyone here should already know THAT, anyway.

Of course, if the Linksys router(s) in question have a default backdoor password, that might not help. My Netgear WNR1000v2-VC (running stock Netgear firmware) has such a hidden "root" password, and I take advantage of it when I occasionally need to look at something that the html admin pages don't show me by running a Netgear utility called "TelnetEnable". That utility does exactly what the POC seems to be doing, it opens up a Linux command line interface (with "root" privileges) to the router (and the "admin" password I have setup is irrelevant to this process).

Bill_MI
Bill In Michigan
MVM
join:2001-01-03
Royal Oak, MI
TP-Link Archer C7
Linksys WRT54GS
Linksys WRT54G v4

Bill_MI

MVM

said by NetFixer:

Of course, if the Linksys router(s) in question have a default backdoor password, that might not help.

Absolutely!

I know it's a Linux environment but do I recall logging in can use a (BLANK) or any username? Or do you have to sign in with user "root"? I vaguely recall, like other Linksys routers, they may have hacked in that compatibility. It's just that kind of change that can open a vulnerability if it's done wrong.