Backdoor giving full administrative control can survive reboots and firmware updates.

cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/193175

Thousands of home and small office routers manufactured by Asus are being infected with a stealthy backdoor that can survive reboots and firmware updates in an attack by a nation-state or another well-resourced threat actor, researchers said.

The unknown attackers gain access to the devices by exploiting now-patched vulnerabilities, some of which have never been tracked through the internationally recognized CVE system. After gaining unauthorized administrative control of the devices, the threat actor installs a public encryption key for access to the device through SSH. From then on, anyone with the private key can automatically log in to the device with administrative system rights.

Durable control

“‍The attacker’s access survives both reboots and firmware updates, giving them durable control over affected devices,” researchers from security firm GreyNoise reported Wednesday. “The attacker maintains long-term access without dropping malware or leaving obvious traces by chaining authentication bypasses, exploiting a known vulnerability, and abusing legitimate configuration features.”

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  • bdonvrAEnglish
    6·
    2 days ago

    Is there any way to test for this?

    • AmbiguousProps@lemmy.todayEnglish
      21·
      2 days ago

      From the article:

      The only way for router users to determine whether their devices are infected is by checking the SSH settings in the configuration panel. Infected routers will show that the device can be logged into by SSH over port 53282 using a digital certificate with a truncated key of

      ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAo41nBoVFfj4HlVMGV+YPsxMDrMlbdDZ…

      To remove the backdoor, infected users should remove the key and the port setting.

      People can also determine if they’ve been targeted if system logs indicate that they have been accessed through the IP addresses 101.99.91[.]151, 101.99.94[.]173, 79.141.163[.]179, or 111.90.146[.]237.