[LINK] USB Modems
stephen at melbpc.org.au
stephen at melbpc.org.au
Sun Apr 28 15:57:22 AEST 2013
3G and 4G USB modems are a security threat, researcher says
Researchers showed how to attack 3G and 4G USB modems at Black Hat Europe
By Lucian Constantin (IDG News Service)15 March, 2013
<http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/456492/3g_4g_usb_modems_security_threat_r
esearcher_says/>
The vast majority of 3G and 4G USB modems handed out by mobile operators to
their customers are manufactured by a handful of companies and run insecure
software, according to two security researchers from Russia.
Researchers Nikita Tarakanov and Oleg Kupreev analyzed the security of
3G/4G USB modems obtained from Russian operators for the past several
months.
Their findings were presented Thursday at the Black Hat Europe 2013
security conference in Amsterdam.
Most 3G/4G modems used in Russia, Europe, and probably elsewhere in the
world, are made by Chinese hardware manufacturers Huawei and ZTE, and are
branded with the mobile operators' logos and trademarks, Tarakanov said.
Because of this, even if the research was done primarily on Huawei modems
from Russian operators, the results should be relevant in other parts of
the world as well, he said.
Tarakanov said that they weren't able to test baseband attacks against the
Qualcomm chips found inside the modems because it's illegal in Russia to
operate your own GSM base station if you're not an intelligence agency or a
telecom operator. "We'll probably have to move to another country for a few
months to do it," he said.
There's still a lot to investigate in terms of the hardware's security. For
example, the SoC (system on a chip) used in many modems has Bluetooth
capability that is disabled from the firmware, but it might be possible to
enable it, the researcher said.
For now, the researchers tested the software preloaded on the modems and
found multiple ways to attack it or to use it in attacks.
For one, it's easy to make an image of the USB modem's file system, modify
it and write it on the modem again. There's a tool available from Huawei to
do modem backup and restore, but there are also free tools that support
modems from other manufacturers, Tarakanov said.
Malware running on the computer could detect the model and version of the
active 3G modem and could write an image with malicious customizations to
it using such tools. That modem would then compromise any computer it's
used on.
The modem contains the installer for an application that gets installed on
the computer, as well as the necessary drivers for different OSes. The
application allows the user to stop, start and manage the Internet
connection established through the modem.
The configuration files for the installed application, as well as those of
the application installer stored on the modem, are in plain text and can be
easily modified. One setting in the configuration files defines what DNS
servers the modem should use for the Internet connection.
An attacker could change those entries to servers controlled by the
attacker, Tarakanov said. This would give the attacker the ability to
direct users to rogue websites when they're trying to visit legitimate ones
using the modem connection.
While the application installer itself cannot be directly modified to load
malware because it's a signed executable, there are some entries in its
configuration file that can be used for this purpose.
For example, many configuration files had paths to antivirus installers and
an option of whether to install those programs or not, Tarakanov said. The
researcher said that he never found an antivirus installer shipped with the
USB modems he tested, but the feature was there.
An attacker could create a custom image with a modified configuration file
that enables this feature and installs a malicious file stored on the modem
instead of an antivirus program. If the image is written on a USB modem,
every time the user would install the modem application, the malware would
also be installed, Tarakanov said.
The researchers also found a possible mass attack vector. Once installed on
a computer, the modem application -- at least the one from Huawei -- checks
periodically for updates from a single server, Tarakanov said. Software
branded for a specific operator searchers for updates in a server directory
specific to that operator.
An attacker who manages to compromise this update server, can launch mass
attacks against users from many operators, Tarakanov said. Huawei 3G modems
from several different Russian operators used the same server, but there
might be other update servers for other countries, he said.
Tarakanov said that he didn't look for vulnerabilities in the actual modem
drivers installed in the OS, but he expects them to have vulnerabilities.
The vast majority of third-party drivers in general have vulnerabilities,
he said.
Tarakanov specializes in exploit writing and finding vulnerabilities in the
Windows kernel mode drivers. However, Oleg Kupreev was the leader for this
particular research project concerning 3G/4G modems.
Research in this area is just at the beginning and there's more to
investigate, Tarakanov said. Someone has to do it because many new laptops
come with 3G/4G modems directly built in and people should know if they're
a security threat.
--
Cheers,
Stephen
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