Fergie's Tech Blog

Embedded Web Servers Exposing Organizations To Attack

Kelly Jackson Higgins writes on Dark Reading:

A researcher who has been scanning the Internet for months looking for unsecured, embedded Web servers has found a bounty of digital scanners, office printers, VoIP systems, storage devices, and other equipment fully exposed and ripe for attack.


Michael Sutton, vice president of security research for Zscaler Labs, at Black Hat USA 2011 next month will demonstrate his findings: Ricoh and Sharp copiers, HP scanners, and Snom voice-over-IP (VoIP) phones were the most commonly discovered devices, all accessible via the Internet. "It was pretty shocking to me: Virtually none of these should be exposed to the Internet. There's not a good reason that an HP scanner should be exposed to the Net," Sutton says.


It's a recipe for disaster: Embedded Web servers with little or no security get misconfigured when they're installed. Most likely, the potential victims are small to midsize businesses or consumers with less technical expertise who misconfigure their devices and have no idea they're showing up online. "They're taking this device, plugging it into the wall, and making a mistake on a router or access point ... and suddenly things are exposed to the Web," he says.

posted by Fergie @ 7/21/2011 07:00:00 PM