Router hacking | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The Chinese nation-state actor known as  Mustang Panda  has been linked to a new set of sophisticated and targeted attacks aimed at European foreign affairs entities since January 2023. An analysis of these intrusions, per Check Point researchers Itay Cohen and Radoslaw Madej, has revealed a custom firmware implant designed explicitly for TP-Link routers. "The implant features several malicious components, including a custom backdoor named 'Horse Shell' that enables the attackers to maintain persistent access, build anonymous infrastructure, and enable lateral movement into compromised networks," the company said . "Due to its firmware-agnostic design, the implant's components can be integrated into various firmware by different vendors." The Israeli cybersecurity firm is tracking the threat group under the mythical creature name Camaro Dragon,  which  is  also known as  BASIN, Bronze President, Earth Preta, HoneyMyte, RedDelta, and Red Lich. The

Several security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in cloud management platforms associated with three industrial cellular router vendors that could expose operational technology (OT) networks to external attacks. The findings were presented by Israeli industrial cybersecurity firm OTORIO at the Black Hat Asia 2023 conference last week. "Industrial cellular routers and gateways are essential IIoT devices that provide connectivity for industrial applications, facilitating remote monitoring, control, and data exchange across various industries," OTORIO said. With gateways widely deployed in critical infrastructure sectors such as substations, water utilities, oil fields, and pipelines, weaknesses in these devices could have severe consequences, impacting availability and process safety. The 11 vulnerabilities discovered by the company allow "remote code execution and full control over hundreds of thousands of devices and OT networks - in some cases, even those not

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Microsoft has confirmed that the  active exploitation of PaperCut servers  is linked to attacks that are designed to deliver Cl0p and LockBit ransomware families. The tech giant's threat intelligence team is attributing a subset of the intrusions to a financially motivated actor it tracks under the name  Lace Tempest  (formerly DEV-0950), which overlaps with other hacking groups like FIN11, TA505, and Evil Corp. "In observed attacks, Lace Tempest ran multiple PowerShell commands to deliver a TrueBot DLL, which connected to a C2 server, attempted to steal LSASS credentials, and injected the  TrueBot payload  into the conhost.exe service," Microsoft  said  in a series of tweets. The next phase of the attack entailed the deployment of Cobalt Strike Beacon implant to conduct reconnaissance, move laterally across the network using WMI, and exfiltrate files of interest via the file-sharing service MegaSync. Lace Tempest is a Cl0p ransomware affiliate that's said to hav

U.K. and U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence agencies have  warned  of Russian nation-state actors exploiting now-patched flaws in networking equipment from Cisco to conduct reconnaissance and deploy malware against select targets. The  intrusions , per the authorities, took place in 2021 and targeted a small number of entities in Europe, U.S. government institutions, and about 250 Ukrainian victims. The activity has been attributed to a threat actor tracked as  APT28 , which is also known as Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard (formerly Strontium), FROZENLAKE, and Sofacy, and is affiliated with the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). "APT28 has been known to access vulnerable routers by using default and weak SNMP community strings, and by exploiting CVE-2017-6742," the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said. CVE-2017-6742  (CVSS score: 8.8) is part of a set of remote code execution flaws that stem from a  buffer overflow condition  in the Simple Ne

A new Golang-based botnet dubbed  HinataBot  has been observed to leverage known flaws to compromise routers and servers and use them to stage distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. "The malware binaries appear to have been named by the malware author after a character from the popular anime series, Naruto, with file name structures such as 'Hinata-<OS>-<Architecture>,'" Akamai  said  in a technical report. Among the methods used to distribute the malware are the exploitation of exposed Hadoop YARN servers and security flaws in Realtek SDK devices ( CVE-2014-8361 )and Huawei HG532 routers ( CVE-2017-17215 , CVSS score: 8.8). Unpatched vulnerabilities and weak credentials have been a low-hanging fruit for attackers, representing an easy, well-documented entry point that does not require sophisticated social engineering tactics or other methods. The threat actors behind HinataBot are said to have been active since at least December 2022, with the

A never-before-seen complex malware is targeting business-grade routers to covertly spy on victims in Latin America, Europe, and North America at least since July 2022. The elusive campaign, dubbed  Hiatus  by Lumen Black Lotus Labs, has been found to deploy two malicious binaries, a remote access trojan dubbed HiatusRAT and a  variant of tcpdump  that makes it possible to capture packet capture on the target device. "Once a targeted system is infected, HiatusRAT allows the threat actor to remotely interact with the system, and it utilizes prebuilt functionality [...] to convert the compromised machine into a covert proxy for the threat actor," the company  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The packet-capture binary enables the actor to monitor router traffic on ports associated with email and file-transfer communications." The threat cluster primarily singles out end-of-life (EoL) DrayTek Vigor router models 2960 and 3900, with approximately 100

Cisco has warned of two security vulnerabilities affecting end-of-life (EoL) Small Business RV016, RV042, RV042G, and RV082 routers that it said will not be fixed, even as it acknowledged the public availability of proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit. The  issues  are rooted in the router's web-based management interface, enabling a remote adversary to sidestep authentication or execute malicious commands on the underlying operating system. The most severe of the two is CVE-2023-20025 (CVSS score: 9.0), which is the result of improper validation of user input within incoming HTTP packets. A threat actor could exploit it remotely by sending a specially crafted HTTP request to vulnerable routers' web-based management interface to bypass authentication and obtain elevated permissions. The lack of adequate validation is also the reason behind the second flaw tracked as CVE-2023-20026 (CVSS score: 6.5), permitting an attacker with valid admin credentials to achieve root-level privi

As many as 29 different router models from DrayTek have been identified as affected by a new critical, unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability that, if successfully exploited, could lead to full compromise of the devices and unauthorized access to the broader network. "The attack can be performed without user interaction if the management interface of the device has been configured to be internet facing," Trellix researcher Philippe Laulheret  said . "A one-click attack can also be performed from within the LAN in the default device configuration." Filed under CVE-2022-32548, the vulnerability has received the maximum severity rating of 10.0 on the CVSS scoring system, owing to its ability to completely allow an adversary to seize control of the routers. At its core, the shortcoming is the result of a buffer overflow flaw in the web management interface ("/cgi-bin/wlogin.cgi"), which can be weaponized by a malicious actor by supplying spec

A never-before-seen remote access trojan dubbed ZuoRAT has been singling out small office/home office (SOHO) routers as part of a sophisticated campaign targeting North American and European networks. The malware "grants the actor the ability to pivot into the local network and gain access to additional systems on the LAN by hijacking network communications to maintain an undetected foothold," researchers from Lumen Black Lotus Labs said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The stealthy operation, which targeted routers from ASUS, Cisco, DrayTek, and NETGEAR, is believed to have commenced in early 2020 during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, effectively remaining under the radar for over two years. "Consumers and remote employees routinely use SOHO routers, but these devices are rarely monitored or patched, which makes them one of the weakest points of a network's perimeter," the company's threat intelligence team said. Initial access

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced that it neutralized Cyclops Blink , a modular botnet controlled by a threat actor known as Sandworm, which has been attributed to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU). "The operation copied and removed malware from vulnerable internet-connected firewall devices that Sandworm used for command-and-control (C2) of the underlying botnet," the DoJ  said  in a statement Wednesday. In addition to disrupting its C2 infrastructure, the operation also closed the external management ports that the threat actor used to establish connections with the firewall appliances, effectively severing contact and preventing the hacking group from using the infected devices to commandeer the botnet. The March 22 court-authorized disruption of Cyclops Blink comes a little over a month after intelligence agencies in the U.K. and the U.S.  described  the botnet as a replacement fram

Networking equipment company Netgear has released patches to remediate a high-severity remote code execution vulnerability affecting multiple routers that could be exploited by remote attackers to take control of an affected system. Traced as  CVE-2021-40847  (CVSS score: 8.1), the security weakness impacts the following models - R6400v2 (fixed in firmware version 1.0.4.120) R6700 (fixed in firmware version 1.0.2.26) R6700v3 (fixed in firmware version 1.0.4.120) R6900 (fixed in firmware version 1.0.2.26) R6900P (fixed in firmware version 3.3.142_HOTFIX) R7000 (fixed in firmware version 1.0.11.128) R7000P (fixed in firmware version 1.3.3.142_HOTFIX) R7850 (fixed in firmware version 1.0.5.76) R7900 (fixed in firmware version 1.0.4.46) R8000 (fixed in firmware version 1.0.4.76) RS400 (fixed in firmware version 1.5.1.80) According to GRIMM security researcher Adam Nichols, the vulnerability resides within Circle , a third-party component included in the firmware that offer

Networking equipment major Cisco Systems has said it does not plan to fix a critical security vulnerability affecting some of its Small Business routers, instead urging users to replace the devices. The bug, tracked as CVE-2021-1459, is rated with a CVSS score of 9.8 out of 10, and affects RV110W VPN firewall and Small Business RV130, RV130W, and RV215W routers, allowing an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on an affected appliance. The flaw, which stems from improper validation of user-supplied input in the web-based management interface, could be exploited by a malicious actor to send specially-crafted HTTP requests to the targeted device and achieve remote code execution. "A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code as the root user on the underlying operating system of the affected device," Cisco  said  in its advisory. Security researcher Treck Zhou has been credited with reporting the vulnerability. Although th

Some widely sold D-Link VPN router models have been found vulnerable to three new high-risk security vulnerabilities, leaving millions of home and business networks open to cyberattacks—even if they are secured with a strong password. Discovered by researchers at Digital Defense, the three security shortcomings were responsibly disclosed to D-Link on August 11, which, if exploited, could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands on vulnerable networking devices via specially-crafted requests and even launch denial-of-service attacks. D-Link DSR-150, DSR-250, DSR-500, and DSR-1000AC and other VPN router models in the DSR Family running firmware version 3.14 and 3.17 are vulnerable to the remotely exploitable root command injection flaw. The Taiwanese networking equipment maker  confirmed  the issues in an advisory on December 1, adding that the patches were under development for two of three flaws, which have now been released to the public at the time of writing. "

The federal prosecutors in the United States have charged Uber's former chief security officer, Joe Sullivan , for covering up a massive data breach that the ride-hailing company suffered in 2016. According to the press release published by the U.S. Department of Justice, Sullivan "took deliberate steps to conceal, deflect, and mislead the Federal Trade Commission about the breach" that also involved paying hackers $100,000 ransom to keep the incident secret. "A criminal complaint was filed today in federal court charging Joseph Sullivan with obstruction of justice and misprision of a felony in connection with the attempted cover-up of the 2016 hack of Uber Technologies," it says. The 2016 Uber's data breach exposed names, email addresses, phone numbers of 57 million Uber riders and drivers, and driver license numbers of around 600,000 drivers. The company revealed this information to the public almost a year later in 2017, immediately after Su

Cybersecurity researchers with Qihoo 360's NetLab today unveiled details of two recently spotted zero-day cyberattack campaigns in the wild targeting enterprise-grade networking devices manufactured by Taiwan-based DrayTek. According to the report , at least two separate groups of hackers exploited two critical remote command injection vulnerabilities ( CVE-2020-8515 ) affecting DrayTek Vigor enterprise switches, load-balancers, routers and VPN gateway devices to eavesdrop on network traffic and install backdoors. The zero-day attacks started somewhere at the end of last November or at the beginning of December and are potentially still ongoing against thousands of publicly exposed DrayTek switche s, Vigor 2960, 3900, 300B devices that haven't yet been patched with the latest firmware updates released last month. The zero-day vulnerabilities in question can be exploited by any unauthorized remote attackers to inject and execute arbitrary commands on the system, as als

Cybersecurity researchers today uncovered a new high-severity hardware vulnerability residing in the widely-used Wi-Fi chips manufactured by Broadcom and Cypress—apparently powering over a billion devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, routers, and IoT gadgets. Dubbed ' Kr00k ' and tracked as CVE-2019-15126 , the flaw could let nearby remote attackers intercept and decrypt some wireless network packets transmitted over-the-air by a vulnerable device. The attacker does not need to be connected to the victim's wireless network and the flaw works against vulnerable devices using WPA2-Personal or WPA2-Enterprise protocols, with AES-CCMP encryption, to protect their network traffic. "Our tests confirmed some client devices by Amazon (Echo, Kindle), Apple (iPhone, iPad, MacBook), Google (Nexus), Samsung (Galaxy), Raspberry (Pi 3), Xiaomi (RedMi), as well as some access points by Asus and Huawei, were vulnerable to Kr00k," ESET researchers said. Acc

The world of connected consumer electronics, IoT, and smart devices is growing faster than ever with tens of billions of connected devices streaming and sharing data wirelessly over the Internet, but how secure is it? As we connect everything from coffee maker to front-door locks and cars to the Internet, we're creating more potential—and possibly more dangerous—ways for hackers to wreak havoc. Believe me, there are over 100 ways a hacker can ruin your life just by compromising your wireless router —a device that controls the traffic between your local network and the Internet, threatening the security and privacy of a wide range of wireless devices, from computers and phones to IP Cameras, smart TVs and connected appliances. In its latest study titled " SOHOpelessly Broken 2.0 ," Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) discovered a total of 125 different security vulnerabilities across 13 small office/home office (SOHO) routers and Network Attached Storage (NAS) de

What could be worse than your router leaking its administrative login credentials in plaintext? Cybersecurity researchers from Trustwave's SpiderLabs have discovered multiple security vulnerabilities in some router models from two popular manufacturers—D-Link and Comba Telecom—that involve insecure storage of credentials, potentially affecting every user and system on that network. Researcher Simon Kenin told The Hacker News that he discovered a total of five vulnerabilities—two in a D-Link DSL modem typically installed to connect a home network to an ISP, and three in multiple Comba Telecom WiFi devices. These flaws could potentially allow attackers to change your device settings, extract sensitive information, perform MitM attacks, redirect you to phishing or malicious sites and launch many more types of attacks. "Since your router is the gateway in and out of your entire network it can potentially affect every user and system on that network. An attacker-controlled