Owners of TP-Link routers need to read this story from TechCrunch ASAP as there’s a remote access exploit that has been out in the wild for as much as a year:
Thousands of TP-Link routers are vulnerable to a bug that can be used to remotely take control of the device, but it took more than a year for the company to publish the patches on its website.
The vulnerability allows any low-skilled attacker to remotely gain full access to an affected router. The exploit relies on the router’s default password to work, which many don’t change.
In the worst-case scenario, an attacker could target vulnerable devices on a massive scale, using a similar mechanism to how botnets like Mirai worked — by scouring the web and hijacking routers using default passwords like “admin” and “pass.”
Well, that’s not good. However it gets worse:
Andrew Mabbitt, founder of U.K. cybersecurity firm Fidus Information Security, first discovered and disclosed the remote code execution bug to TP-Link in October 2017. TP-Link released a patch a few weeks later for the vulnerable WR940N router, but Mabbitt warned TP-Link again in January 2018 that another router, TP-Link’s WR740N, was also vulnerable to the same bug because the company reused vulnerable code between devices.
TP-Link said the vulnerability was quickly patched in both routers. But when we checked, the firmware for WR740N wasn’t available on the website.
When asked, a TP-Link spokesperson said the update was “currently available when requested from tech support,” but wouldn’t explain why. Only after TechCrunch reached out, TP-Link updated the firmware page to include the latest security update.
That’s pretty bad on the part of TP-Link as the media should have to tell anyone that they have an issue as the optics just suck when that happens and it’s made public. In any case, if you have either router that is mentioned above, it is worth your time to see if you’re running the latest firmware.
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This entry was posted on May 22, 2019 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags TP-Link. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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If You Have A TP-Link Router…. You May Have A Problem…..
Owners of TP-Link routers need to read this story from TechCrunch ASAP as there’s a remote access exploit that has been out in the wild for as much as a year:
Thousands of TP-Link routers are vulnerable to a bug that can be used to remotely take control of the device, but it took more than a year for the company to publish the patches on its website.
The vulnerability allows any low-skilled attacker to remotely gain full access to an affected router. The exploit relies on the router’s default password to work, which many don’t change.
In the worst-case scenario, an attacker could target vulnerable devices on a massive scale, using a similar mechanism to how botnets like Mirai worked — by scouring the web and hijacking routers using default passwords like “admin” and “pass.”
Well, that’s not good. However it gets worse:
Andrew Mabbitt, founder of U.K. cybersecurity firm Fidus Information Security, first discovered and disclosed the remote code execution bug to TP-Link in October 2017. TP-Link released a patch a few weeks later for the vulnerable WR940N router, but Mabbitt warned TP-Link again in January 2018 that another router, TP-Link’s WR740N, was also vulnerable to the same bug because the company reused vulnerable code between devices.
TP-Link said the vulnerability was quickly patched in both routers. But when we checked, the firmware for WR740N wasn’t available on the website.
When asked, a TP-Link spokesperson said the update was “currently available when requested from tech support,” but wouldn’t explain why. Only after TechCrunch reached out, TP-Link updated the firmware page to include the latest security update.
That’s pretty bad on the part of TP-Link as the media should have to tell anyone that they have an issue as the optics just suck when that happens and it’s made public. In any case, if you have either router that is mentioned above, it is worth your time to see if you’re running the latest firmware.
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This entry was posted on May 22, 2019 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags TP-Link. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.