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Security Software

Cisco Removes Backdoor Account, Fourth Incident in the Last Four Months (bleepingcomputer.com) 51

Posted by msmash from the get-your-things-together dept.
For the fourth time this year, Cisco has removed hardcoded credentials that were left inside one of its products, which an attacker could have exploited to gain access to devices and inherently to customer networks. From a report: This time around, the hardcoded password was found in Cisco's Wide Area Application Services (WAAS), which is a software package that runs on Cisco hardware that can optimize WAN traffic management. This backdoor mechanism (CVE-2018-0329) was in the form of a hardcoded, read-only SNMP community string in the configuration file of the SNMP daemon. SNMP stands for Simple Network Management Protocol, an Internet protocol for collecting data about and from remote devices. The community string was there so SNMP servers knowing the string's value could connect to the remote Cisco device and gather statistics and system information about it.
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Cisco Removes Backdoor Account, Fourth Incident in the Last Four Months More

Cisco Removes Backdoor Account, Fourth Incident in the Last Four Months

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  • Fool me once, shame on you... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Friday June 08, 2018 @01:47PM (#56751472)
    ...fool me four times, I still won't get fired for buying Cisco?

  • No news here (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The string is probably "public."

  • How can this be so difficult? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Certainly these types of things would be picked up by the rigorous and extensive code audit that all firmware at Cisco must undergo before being RTM right?
  • Is it good that there were backdoors in the products? Of course not. But a rash of these sort of incidents being reported in a short time isn't a bad thing, it means someone is reviewing, cleaning house, and being transparent about it which is actually a good sign going forward. This kind of thing isn't a reason to dump a company or service it's more like six months ago you should have dumped them and didn't know it but now they are actually stepping up and whoever you switch to might be hiding all kinds of

    • It shows Cisco is riddled with incompetent developers who are too stupid to get even the most simple hello world problem: "do not put backdoors in your work" wrong. So it doesn't matter if there is now a single guy on top who goes through all the code and makes them work it over. I means the developers there are too stupid to be trusted with anything. And all those lines by those same stupid developers are still in there. They still made the millions or even billions of LOC in Cisco firmware which Cisco can

    • At least Cisco PR is up to the task.
      Wasn't that always someone else (outside the company) finding those backdoors - just saying.
    • bullshit. There are only 2 conclusions you can draw from this
      a) CISCO's development process is fundamentally broken and there security vetting so flawed as to be laughably competent or
      b) they are intentionally malicious.
      neither scenario is good news. These are not standard security flaws that should be expected and discovered.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The brands that buy the product need help often so the backdoor is the only way to help. All part and parcel of working with the modern global internet.
      The NSA demands such support and it has to be done.

      Thats the very best way of thinking about it. Its just part of the product line. To help consumer, to help the NSA.

      The next options are much more fun.
      The NSA and other US agencies have placed staff in a lot of big brands who do this code "undercover" and live for every generation of product.
      Other U
      • Everyone is losing who isn't some flavor of police.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          Its amazing all this can stay in place and no users, experts ever really comment over the productive use of product lines. For generations.
          Thats some interesting power over publication and research.

  • C'mon Cisco (Score:5, Funny)

    by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Friday June 08, 2018 @02:51PM (#56751872) Homepage
    Cisco needs to get serious about making its hardcoded back doors less easy to find.

  • We don't need Russian or Chinese companies to open Americans' devices to foreign governments, Cisco is doing a good job by themselves.

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