Huawei USB modems vulnerable
Drivers, config, updates all dangerous
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Huawei has been accused of poor security practice by Russian researcher Nikita Tarakanov, who told Black Hat Europe last week that the vendor's 3G and 4G devices are vulnerable and its update server is a massive attack vector.
The update server in the Netherlands that Tarakanov tested probably isn't the only one used by Huawei, but he found it was running on the hoary code of Windows IIS 6.0 – a relic from Windows Server 2003. If the server were compromised, he said, an attacker could distribute a malicious update to millions of dongle users.
While the executable the USB keys run is signed, he says the modems' plaintext configuration files are another matter: easy to modify in ways that would point the modems to malicious software. Two examples given in Network World are that an attacker could change the DNS the modems use, pointing users to malicious Websites; and a built-in anti-virus installer parameter, which could be modified to install malicious software.
There are also privilege escalation vulnerabilities under both Windows and OS X. According to The H Security, the latter vulnerability was a last-second addition to the presentation after iOS researcher Stefan Esser discovered and tweeted it from the conference: the Huawei OS X update app (ouc.app) has unrestricted access to /usr/local.
"Can anyone verify that the Telekom LTE Stick from Huawei makes /usr/local world writable on OSX? WTF?", Esser posted.
While the research was conducted in Russia, Tarakanov believes the vulnerabilities aren't specific to that country. ®
COMMENTS
First thing I do when I get these sticks is work out how to enable diag mode and disable the cdrom emulation.
They work so much better like that and more consistently regardless of OS I have found.
Re: Hmm, which device?
How is it an OS problem?
The installer will generally ask for administrative privileges so that it can install device drivers. Nothing unusual there. However, having gained administrative privileges, it has all the power to be able to `chmod /usr/local 777`.
Even if there was some restriction on the chmod syscall to prevent this; we're dealing with a piece of driver code that effectively runs inside the kernel space, so has the power to just directly access devices anyway.
oh rlly
Russian calls Chinese company a danger to their users...
"Hi Kettle? Just calling to say you is black man. Soooo black, oo you is black, blacker than a crow's bumhole on a moonless night! Yes i know. Whatever, fuck you. Yes it is Pot calling. bye"
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Data control in the cloud
Cloud based data management
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
