BT launches Home Hub backdoor investigation

Two million exposed?

By Chris Williams • Get more from this author

Posted in Telecoms, 9th October 2007 15:31 GMT

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BT's security pros are probing the alleged hole in its Home Hub firmware, which resarchers claim can gift hijackers with full admin rights to the wireless router.

The vulnerability was reported yesterday on the GNUCitizen blog. By luring one of the UK's two million Home Hub owners to a malicious website it's possible to steal their passwords, listen in on their VoIP calls, and redirect them to online scams, say Adrian Pastor and Petko Petkov.

BT sent us this statement on Tuesday afternoon:

We are aware of these claims and are actively investigating the alleged vulnerability. However, as part of a series of ongoing improvements, this week we began pushing out a new firmware update to Home Hub owners which further improves security in a number of areas.

Pastor and Petkov say the exploit is confirmed in the most recent version of BT's firmware.

The GNUCitizen researchers went ahead and published the vulnerability without waiting for BT to respond, complaining that the telco giant failed to respond to another hole they discovered last year. BT said: "We at BT remain committed to working with industry to ensure we protect our customers against security threats."

The Home Hub is built by Thompson, and its firmware is based on a tweaked version of the Linux kernel. ®

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