Ubiquiti network gear can be ‘hijacked by an evil URL’ – thanks to its 20-year-old PHP build
Security researchers have gone public with details of an exploitable flaw in Ubiquiti’s wireless networking gear – after the manufacturer allegedly failed to release firmware patches.
Austrian-based bods at SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab found the programming cockup in November and contacted Ubiquiti – based in San Jose, California – via its HackerOne-hosted bug bounty program. Ubiquiti first denied this was a new bug, then accepted it, then stalled issuing a patch, we’re told. After repeated warnings, SEC has now shed light on the security shortcomings.
Essentially, if you can trick someone using a Ubiquiti gateway or router to click on a malicious link, or embed the URL in a webpage they visit, you can inject commands into the vulnerable device. The networking kit uses a web interface to administer it, and has zero CSRF protection. This means attackers can perform actions as logged-in users.
A hacker can exploit this blunder to open a reverse shell to connect to a Ubiquiti router and gain root access – yes, the builtin web server runs as root. SEC claims that once inside, the attacker can then take over the entire network. And you can thank a very outdated version of PHP included with the software, we’re told.
“A command injection vulnerability was found in ‘pingtest_action.cgi.’ This script is vulnerable since it is possible to inject a value of a variable. One of the reasons for this behavior is the used PHP version (PHP/FI 2.0.1 from 1997),” SEC’s advisory today states.
“The vulnerability can be exploited by luring an attacked user to click on a crafted link or just surf on a malicious website. The whole attack can be performed via a single GET-request and is very simple since there is no CSRF protection.”
Here’s a video of an example exploitation:
The SEC team tested the attack against four Ubiquiti devices, and believes another 38 models are similarly vulnerable. All the affected equipment, according to SEC, is listed in the above advisory. Proof-of-concept exploits were not published as there is still no patch available for the insecure firmware.
Ubiquiti had no comment at time of publication.
This isn’t the first time Ubiquiti customers have been left with an unfixed security cockup by their supplier. A previous flaw was finally patched by a third party back in 2015 after the company failed to fix it in time, despite proof of concept code being in wide circulation.
Then again, security doesn’t seem to be Ubiquiti’s strong point. The firm lost $46.7m in 2015 when it fell prey to an invoice scammer and sent the money – most of which it couldn’t recover – to banks in Asia. Ubiquiti’s chief accounting officer resigned shortly afterwards. ®
Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/16/ubiquiti_networking_php_hole/