Misfortune Cookie Threatens 15 Million SOHO Routers

A critical vulnerability is exposing over 15 million home routers to man-in-middle attacks, according to researchers from Check Point.

The flaw, identified as CVE-2014-9222, allows an attacker to remotely take over the device with administrative privileges and intercept all communication going through it.

“Any device connected to it ” including computers, phones, tablets, printers, security cameras, refrigerators, toasters or any other networked device in your home or office network ” may have increased risk of compromise,” researchers said. “An attacker exploiting the Misfortune Cookie vulnerability can easily monitor your Internet connection, steal your credentials and personal or business data, attempt to infect your machines with malware, and over-crisp your toast.”

Some 12 million devices from 189 countries are vulnerable, including 200 models from various manufacturers containing RomPager services with versions older than 4.34.

RomPager is a software embedded into residential gateway devices. Older versions have been found to contain a critical bug that allows attackers to send simple HTTP cookie files to corrupt the device memory and hand over administrative control.

The flawed code was written in 2002 and bundled in a software development kit used by manufacturers to build firmware. A patch was introduced three years later but not all manufacturers have updated their devices, as the process takes time.

“We can confirm many devices today still ship with the vulnerable version in place,” researchers said.

Up to this point, there is no evidence the vulnerability has been actively exploited. However, we advise taking preventative measures. Bitdefender BOX is a hardware device that sits next to the Wi-Fi router and protects the entire network. Read more about it.