// February 4th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News
To meet the needs of law enforcement, most telecommunications equipment includes hardware and software that allow for the monitoring of traffic originating with the targets of investigations. The precise capabilities are often dictated by formalized standards, which allow any hardware maker to implement a compliant system. Unfortunately, these standards often leave the hardware wide open to various attacks that leave regular users vulnerable, and provide savvy surveillance targets the opportunity to evade the snooping. An IBM researcher has put Cisco’s system under the microscope at a Black Hat Conference, and found it comes up short. Although the standard was designed to put Cisco hardware in compliance with EU directives, it has apparently been adopted by a number of other hardware makers. The presentation, described in detail by Dark Reading, describes how its reliance on SNMPv3, creates a variety of options for attack. For example, the protocol was initially vulnerable to a brute force attacks on its authentication system; although Cisco has patched that flaw, there’s no way to determine how many unpatched machines remain in the wild. SNMP also defaults to operating over UDP, and it’s relatively easy to spoof things like the source address and port for that protocol. It’s possible to use TCP instead, and even limit the addresses that can access the hardware, but the protocol doesn’t specify either of these. Communications aren’t encrypted by default, and the system won’t notify administrators when a trace is activated or disabled, meaning that hackers could potentially set up or eliminate surveillance without anyone being aware of it. The IBM researcher, Tom Cross, notified Cisco of the issues back in December, and recommends revisions to the standard that will ensure that it is more secure by default. That might be helpful, but it still wouldn’t deal with the problems posed by unpatched systems—Cross himself apparently recognizes that network administrators can be hesitant to risk the disruption of service that may come with updating major pieces of equipment.
