Last week I read were several Lynksys routers were subject to self replicating malware (link found inside first article. In reading I now find some Netgear, D-Link and now Asus routers are in Question.
Wonder how many million PCs large corporations have that still run XP with no definite change over in site ? This is one target Google should look at (A Desktop Android that will run XP programs)
For many the touch screens are like toys and they want the simple keyboard and mouse. And besides the cost of each computer add to that the cost of 4 to 10 programs (or more) each runs.
Hopefully when CIS-7 is officially released and out of beta testing it will protect XP users until they can afford the major upgrades.
I don’t really know about other the router issue other than Asus, personally I have an Asus RT-N66U which has served me well, the problem here is that Aicloud leaks username and password in cleartext (WTF?) and the FTP allowed anyone to do pretty much anything unless told otherwise.
The above hasn’t really been an issue for me simply because I realized fairly quickly that the hardware in the Asus RT-N66U really can’t handle those services, it’s just too weak and honestly you’d be better of with something like ownCloud or something else. So needless to say I turned them off. But Asus really handled this in a bad way and not even in a timely fashion, hell I don’t even know if these issues are fixed in the later firmwares.
Out of curiosity I looked up about the Netgear issues simply because I have a netgear router bridged to simply be a modem, what I could find about that is that there seems to be a few vulnerabilities that malicious parties already on your network (LAN) can exploit, the exception being if you have enabled remote administration.
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So I also looked into the ATM article and I see several issues here but I’m going to point out one in particular:
There are ways to prevent such an attack, [u][b]but with ATMs not built with software security in mind[/b][/u], it's tough to defend against it today.
I’m sorry WHAT!? Did you just say ATMs NOT BUILT WITH SOFTWARE SECURITY IN MIND!? You know what, as long as the criminals don’t steal money from the bank customers/clients but rather the bank itself… I don’t really care** … Simply because if the banks can’t care enough to practice proper and even basic security then they deserve things like this, and honestly hardware security would have solved this as well, just don’t leave enabled ports! What are they going to do if they don’t have anywhere to plug anything in? That’s not to say that they wouldn’t find a way, but it would have taken quite a lot longer to “set up” then breaking it open and just plugging in a USB in the printer port.
** But of course a future version of the malicious code could be designed to hurt customers as well so… fudge that…
Also I’m probably blind but I can’t see to find in which country this is in? I can only find hints that the same may be true for certain ATMs in Germany and the US but I can’t find anywhere where it says the actual country where this has already been taking place?
And A terrific discussion about it and other router security issues can be viewed or listened to in yesterdays Security Now netcast archive here → Sisyphus