More than 12 million routers in homes and small offices are vulnerable to attacks that allow hackers anywhere in the world to monitor user traffic and take administrative control over the devices, researchers said.
The vulnerability resides in "RomPager" software, embedded into the residential gateway devices, made by a company known as AllegroSoft. Versions of RomPager prior to 4.34 contain a critical bug that allows attackers to send simple HTTP cookie files that corrupt device memory and hand over administrative control. Attackers can use that control to read plaintext traffic traveling over the device and possibly take other actions, including changing sensitive DNS settings and monitoring or controling Web cams, computers, or other connected devices. Researchers from Check Point's malware and vulnerability group have dubbed the bug Misfortune Cookie, because it allows hackers to determine the "fortune" of an HTTP request by manipulating cookies. They wrote:
If your gateway device is vulnerable, then any device connected to your network—including computers, phones, tablets, printers, security cameras, refrigerators, toasters or any other networked device in your home or office network—may have increased risk of compromise. An attacker exploiting the Misfortune Cookie vulnerability can easily monitor your Internet connection, steal your credentials and personal or business data, attempt to infect your machines with malware, and over-crisp your toast.
Determining precisely what routers are vulnerable is a vexing undertaking. Devices frequently don't display identifying banners when unauthenticated users access them, and when such banners are presented, they often don't include information about the underlying software components. Beyond that, some device manufacturers manually patch the bug without upgrading the RomPager version, a practice that may generate false positives when automatically flagging all devices running versions prior to 4.34. To work around the challenges, Check Point researchers performed a comprehensive scan of Internet addresses that probed for vulnerable RomPager services. The results showed 12 million unique devices spanning 200 different models contained the bug. Manufacturers affected included D-Link, Edimax, Huawei, TP-Link, ZTE, and ZyXEL.
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