Buggy microcontrollers making up some of the world’s most important servers can be easily backdoored


Security researchers have discovered more than a dozen new vulnerabilities in Baseboard management controllers (BMC), hardware components found in thousands of the world’s most popular enterprise servers.

BMCs are specialized chips built into servers that allow administrators to remotely monitor and manage hardware regardless of the operating system, and even when the hardware is turned off. They provide out-of-band management capabilities such as remote console access, firmware updates, hardware health monitoring, and power control, and have been a pivotal component since their introduction in the late 1990s.

Earlier this week, during the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, security expert HD Moore of runZero disclosed finding more than a dozen flaws in BMCs sold by HPE, Supermicro, Avocent, Huawei, Lenovo, Dell, and others – and to make matters worse, some of the flaws disclosed in the past remain active even today.

Read more…
Source:  TechRadar News


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • Witchetty: Group Uses Updated Toolset in Attacks on Governments in Middle East

    September 29, 2022

    The Witchetty espionage group (aka LookingFrog) has been progressively updating its toolset, using new malware in attacks on targets in the Middle East and Africa. Among the new tools being used by the group is a backdoor Trojan (Backdoor.Stegmap) that employs steganography, a rarely seen technique where malicious code is hidden within an image. In attacks ...

  • The secrets of Schneider Electric’s UMAS protocol

    September 29, 2022

    UMAS (Unified Messaging Application Services) is a proprietary Schneider Electric (SE) protocol used to configure and monitor Schneider Electric PLCs. Schneider Electric controllers that use UMAS include Modicon M580 CPU (part numbers BMEP* and BMEH*) and Modicon M340 CPU (part numbers BMXP34*). Controllers are configured and programmed using engineering software – EcoStruxure™ Control Expert (Unity ...

  • Sophos fixes critical firewall hole exploited by miscreants

    September 28, 2022

    A critical code-injection vulnerability in Sophos Firewall has been fixed — but not before miscreants found and exploited the bug. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2022-3236, exists in the User Portal and Webadmin components of the firewall in versions 19.0 and older. While it hasn’t been issued a CVSS severity score, Sophos deemed it “critical” and noted ...

  • 15-year-old Python tarfile flaw lurks in ‘over 350,000’ code projects

    September 22, 2022

    At least 350,000 open source projects are believed to be potentially vulnerable to exploitation via a Python module flaw that has remained unfixed for 15 years. On Tuesday, security firm Trellix said its threat researchers had encountered a vulnerability in Python’s tarfile module, which provides a way to read and write compressed bundles of files known ...

  • Microsoft Releases Out-of-Band Security Update for Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager

    September 21, 2022

    Microsoft has released a security update to address a vulnerability in Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, versions 2103-2207. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to obtain sensitive information. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) encourages users and administrators to review Microsoft’s Security Advisory for CVE-2022-37972 and apply the necessary updates. Read more… Source: U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security ...

  • Atlassian Confluence Vulnerability CVE-2022-26134 Abused For Cryptocurrency Mining, Other Malware

    September 21, 2022

    Trend Micro researchers observed the active exploitation of CVE-2022-26134, an unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability with a critical rating of 9.8 in the collaboration tool Atlassian Confluence. The gap is being abused for malicious cryptocurrency mining. Confluence has already released a security advisory detailing the fixes necessary for all affected products, namely all versions ...