cryptogon.com

“No one updates their routers,” he says. “If you think people are bad about patching Windows and Linux (which they are) then they are … horrible about updating their networking gear because it is too critical, and usually they don’t have redundancy to be able to do it properly.”

He also notes that routers don’t have security software that can help detect a breach.

“The challenge [with desktop systems] is that while antivirus don’t work well on your desktop, they at least do something [to detect attacks],” he says. “But you don’t even have an integrity check for the most part on routers and other such devices like IP cameras.”

Hijacking routers and switches could allow the NSA to do more than just eavesdrop on all the communications crossing that equipment. It would also let them bring down networks or prevent certain communication, such as military orders, from getting through, though the Post story doesn’t report any such activities. With control of routers, the NSA could re-route traffic to a different location, or even alter it for disinformation campaigns, such as planting information that would have a detrimental political effect or altering orders to re-route troops or supplies in a military operation.

According to the budget document, the CIA’s Tailored Access Programs and NSA’s software engineers possess “templates” for breaking into common brands and models of routers, switches and firewalls.

The article doesn’t say it, but this would likely involve pre-written scripts or backdoor tools and root kits for attacking known but unpatched vulnerabilities in these systems, as well as for attacking zero-day vulnerabilities that are yet unknown to the vendor and customers.

…

In 2005, security researcher Mike Lynn found a serious vulnerability in Cisco IOS, the operating system running on millions of Cisco routers around the world.

Lynn discovered the vulnerability after his employer, Internet Security Systems, asked him to reverse-engineer the Cisco operating system to see if he could find security problems with it. Cisco makes the majority of the routers that operate the backbone of the internet as well as many company networks and critical infrastructure systems. The Cisco IOS is as ubiquitous in the backbone as the Windows operating system is on desktops.

The vulnerability Lynn found, in a new version of the operation system that Cisco planned to release at the time, would have allowed someone to create a router worm that would shut down every Cisco router through which it passed, bringing down a nation’s critical infrastructure. It also would have allowed an attacker to gain complete control of the router to sniff all traffic passing through a network in order to read, record or alter it, or simply prevent traffic from reaching its recipient.

Once Lynn found the vulnerability, it took him six months to develop a working exploit to attack it.

Lynn had planned to discuss the vulnerability at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, until Cisco intervened and forced him to pull the talk under threat of a lawsuit.

But if Lynn knew about the vulnerability, there were likely others who did as well — including intelligence agencies and criminal hackers.