Remote Attack Could Damage Systems Hardware Beyond Repair
An attack, demonstrated by Rich Smith from HP Systems Security Lab at the EUSecWest security conference in London, showed that embedded systems hardware can be damaged beyond repair. The attack could be carried out remotely over the internet.
The attack was demonstrated for the first time in London on Wednesday and was called by Smith “permanent denial of service”. The attack thrashes systems by abusing firmware update mechanisms and if successful, the so-called “phlashing” attack would force victims to replace systems and cause financial damage.
Theoretically the attack could be cheaper and more effective (as the damage caused would be harder to recover from) than conventional denial of service attacks, which typically rely on hackers paying to rent control of a network of compromised PCs.
The new approach relies on exploiting frequently unpatched vulnerabilities in embedded systems, such as flaws in remote management interfaces, to get access to a system. That alone wouldn’t be enough, but because firmware updates are seldom secured, the possibility exists of making an update that effectively trashes a system.
Smith is calling on vendors to authenticate the mechanism as one way of defending against such attacks. He is demonstrating a tool to search for vulnerabilities in firmware, as well as an attack mechanism to corrupt vulnerable firmware at EUSecWest.
Another presentation at EuSecWest will demonstrate a proof of concept rootkit capable of covertly monitoring and controlling Cisco routers. The Cisco IOS rootkit software was developed by Sebastian Muniz, of Core Security and was recently reported.
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