The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the UK National Security Center (NCSC) issued a warning about hacking attacks by the Russians.
These attacks take place on routers and other online devices used in homes, small businesses and large organizations, indicating they are vulnerable to cyber attacks.
The hacking campaign, according to researchers, targets routers and other networking devices with man-in-the-middle attacks aimed at cyber espionage, theft of intellectual property and the maintenance of permanent access to victims' networks for use in further attacks.
The NCSC warning (owned by the GCHQ secret service) reports that systems with Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) enabled, and Cisco Smart Install (SMI) enabled devices and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) devices are vulnerable to attacks .
Millions of these devices around the world are reported to have been tampered with, and especially those that used the default passwords.
The warning includes details on how to secure devices that use the services: Telnet, SNMP, TFTP, and SMI while Cisco has published a set of best practices for "hardening its anti-cyber attack devices targeting network infrastructure."
The NCSC warning states:
Network devices are often easy targets. Once installed, many of these network devices do not provide security solutions like computers.
It states that few of these devices have any antivirus or security tools, and that "manufacturers build and distribute these network devices with insecure services that allow an easy installation, operation and maintenance".
The report urges manufacturers not to design products that support legacy protocols or unencrypted functions and to design these devices to require users to change the default passwords before using them.
Authorities in the United States and the United Kingdom have not said why they blamed the Kremlin for the attacks, but said they "believe that the Russian state is behind this malicious cyber-targeting activity."
The Russian embassy in the United Kingdom rejected the allegations:
We consider these accusations and accusations, impressive examples of a reckless, provocative and unfounded policy against Russia
On the other hand, Jeremy Fleming, director of the UK Information Office GCHQ, said:
They do not play with the same rules, they operate with very blurred boundaries between criminal and state activity
But does the above statement concern all secret services around the world? Namely NSA, CIA and GCHQ?
Which one of them? uses honest means to break into computers and hack into infrastructure systems?
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