Monthly Archives: January 2018

Hotel Wifi = Raw Internet. A true story.

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A friend on a road-trip recently had an experience using hotel wifi that was a little surprising.  For several hours, while on the hotel’s wifi, her machine was effectively on the open Internet with no intervening firewall,

Her laptop was instrumented with one of MSI’s “honeypoints“, a lightweight honeypot that emulates various services and reports back to a central console when these “fake” services are interacted with, possibly by an attacker.

Over the several hour period while on wifi, the following Internet probes (and in some cases clear attacks) were seen.

The attacker IP and the port probed are in bold below:

  • Jan 15 18:03:43 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 198.20.87.98 on port 443 at 2018-01-15 18:03:42 Alert Data: Connection Received  ==> https probe
  • Jan 15 18:03:49 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 198.20.87.98 on port 443 at 2018-01-15 18:03:48 Alert Data: GET / HTTP/1.1#015#012Host: 63.140.158.108#015#012#015
  • Jan 15 18:03:49 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 198.20.87.98 on port 443 at 2018-01-15 18:03:48 Alert Data: Non-ASCII Data Detected in Received Data.#012 File saved as Alert2215.txt
  • Jan 15 18:23:02 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 181.214.87.7 on port 3389 at 2018-01-15 18:23:02 Alert Data: Non-ASCII Data Detected in Received Data.#012 File saved as Alert2216.txt  ==> Terminal services probe from Sweden
  • Jan 15 20:06:21 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 209.126.136.7 on port 443 at 2018-01-15 20:06:20 Alert Data: Connection Received
  • Jan 15 20:06:29 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 209.126.136.7 on port 443 at 2018-01-15 20:06:28 Alert Data: Non-ASCII Data Detected in Received Data.#012 File saved as Alert2217.txt
  • Jan 15 20:20:36 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 189.219.71.36 on port 23 at 2018-01-15 20:20:35 Alert Data: cat /proc/mounts; (/bin/busybox BBFMC || )  ==> Port 23 (telnet) IOT attack from Mexico. Likely from a Mirai botnet variant.
  • Jan 15 20:26:22 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 8.3.123.42 on port 1433 at 2018-01-15 20:26:21 Alert Data: Non-ASCII Data Detected in Received Data.#012 File saved as Alert2218.txt  ==> Microsoft SQL Server probe from Guam
  • Jan 15 20:26:22 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 8.3.123.42 on port 1433 at 2018-01-15 20:26:22 Alert Data: Connection Received
  • Jan 15 20:26:33 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 8.3.123.42 on port 1433 at 2018-01-15 20:26:32 Alert Data: Non-ASCII Data Detected in Received Data.#012 File saved as Alert2219.txt
  • Jan 15 22:03:44 HPSS012 HPSS Agent: Tarsus.local received an alert from: 198.199.113.84 on port 1433 at 2018-01-15 22:03:43 Alert Data: Non-ASCII Data Detected in Received Data.#012 File saved as Alert2220.txt  ==> SQL Server probe from U.S. 

These alerts were being reported to the console from the IP address assigned by the hotel to my friend’s laptop: 63.140.158.108

That IP is registered to:

NetRange: 63.140.128.0 – 63.140.255.255
CIDR: 63.140.128.0/17
NetName: WAYPORT-63-140-182-NET

Wayport is an ATT wifi service providing “hotspots” to various large companies.

These are the types of probes and attacks a box on the open Internet can expect to get. It’s become like cosmic radiation – pervasive. I discussed a previous related event here:  https://stateofsecurity.com/?p=4126

What is interesting in this case is the fact they happened at all.

The hotel was part of a major chain.  The common assumption is they are watching out for their guests to ensure a “safe” wifi environment…and in general they are.

But – there maybe some fine print.

Some hotel wifi agreements apparently specifically allow you to request “advanced” connectivity options, in some cases as a result of wanting to do VPN from your laptop.  The result of those decisions may lead to a public Internet address and full Internet exposure of your device .

So – no Internet firewall but the one you bring with you.

Bottom Line:

  • Regardless of the cause, you should expect the worst from “free” wifi.
  • Assume full Internet exposure and have a software firewall enabled that blocks unsolicited inbound traffic.

See:

Quote from that last:

“Most private LANs use network firewalls to defend trusted insiders against Internet-borne attacks.This is not necessarily true in hotel broadband LANs, where topologies and security practices vary widely.For example, some use private IP addressing, while others assign each user their own public IP address to facilitate VPN tunneling. Users may assume they are insulated from outsiders, but really have no idea whether any firewall lies between
their notebook and the Internet. Notebooks that do not firewall themselves or that use certain applications that open holes in firewalls could thus be exposed to intrusions from the far side of the Internet.”

Spectre and Meltdown and Tigers, Oh my….well, maybe not tigers….

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On January 3rd, three new vulnerabilities were disclosed. These vulnerabilities take advantage of how various CPU’s handle processing in order to return a faster result.

The technical details for Spectre and Meltdown are addressed by the papers linked to their names above. And some POC’s from the Project Zero team.

A few observations on how the industry is addressing this issue…and a few points of interest that I’ve found along the way. First, let’s note that the CVE’s for these are 2017…when in 2017? We don’t know. But the catchy domain names were registered around the third week in December, 2017.

The full vendor matrix at CERT – this is always worth watching, and there are some useful tips for cloud implemenations via Amazon and Microsoft Azure:

Operating system manufacturers:

Apple

  • Will release updates for Safari and iOS in coming days. Some speculation that iOS on Mac’s that is 10.13.2 or higher has some protection from one or more variants – not verified
  • https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208394

Windows

Linux

Some antivirus solutions are causing blue screens after application of these patches:

This is particularly interesting to me – the browsers. I did not expect to see the browser patch bandwagon to be as rapid as it has been:

Firefox

Internet Explorer

Safari

  • Will be addressed in approximately the same timeframe as Apple iOS patches – current ETA unknown

Chrome

The long and short. Is the sky falling? Probably not. If you have solutions that are hosted with a cloud provider, check in with them. What are their recommended mitigations, and have you implemented them? In an enterprise environment, do your due diligence on patches. Patch in your test environment first, and research your antivirus solution for potential impact.

And I believe I’m paraphrasing the excellent Graham Cluley. Calm down, make a cup of tea – although mine is salted caramel coffee. Patch during your normal cadence for critical patches, and keep the ship afloat!