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Date: 27th Aug 09
Airmagnet say Cisco's WLAN AP can be skyjacked
AirMagnet's engineers have identified security loophole
in Cisco WLAN Access Points
Cisco's OTAP feature is the entry-point for intruders. The
venerable Cisco's OTAP feature allow unconnected WiFi AP
to listen to traffic from other nearby Cisco APs to quickly
locate nearby controllers.
Airmagnet engineers have named this venerability has SkyJacking
The two elements of vulnerability are, unintentional exposure
or leakage of information in all lightweight Cisco APs and
a threat for APs to be incorrectly assigned to an outside
Cisco controller either by accident or at the direction
of a potential hacker.
Further explanation from Airmagnet goes like this:
In normal operation, Cisco APs generate an unencrypted multicast
data frame that travels over the air and includes a variety
of information in the clear. From these frames a hacker
listening to the airwaves could determine the MAC address
of the wireless controller that the AP is connected to,
the IP address for that controller, and a variety of AP
configuration options. These frames are always unencrypted
regardless of the encryption scheme used in the network,
and are always sent regardless of whether the OTAP feature
is turned on or not. At the very least, this allows anyone
listening to the network to easily find the internal addresses
of the wireless LAN controllers in the network, and potentially
target them for attack. All lightweight Cisco deployments
are subject to this exposure.
Unlike the vulnerability, the SkyJack exploit requires
the actual OTAP feature to be enabled. With that feature
enabled, a newly deployed Cisco AP will listen to the above-mentioned
Multicast Data Frame to determine the address of its nearest
controller. The potential exists for the Cisco AP to "hear"
multicast traffic from a neighboring network and incorrectly
connect to a neighbor or otherwise unapproved Cisco controller.
This ultimately could lead to an enterprise's access point
connecting outside of the company to an outside controller,
and therefore being under outside control. This same mechanism
could be done intentionally by a hacker to purposely SkyJack
APs and take control of an enterprise's access point.
Airmagnet website url is http://www.airmagnet.com
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