Crucial vulnerabilities have been discovered inside Cinterion mobile modems. Disclosed throughout a Kaspersky presentation at OffensiveCon in Berlin on Might 11, these flaws might enable distant attackers to execute arbitrary code, posing a big menace to the integrity of hundreds of thousands of business units reliant on these modems.
The recognized vulnerabilities, together with CVE-2023-47610, spotlight extreme safety weaknesses inside the modem’s SUPL message handlers. Exploiting this flaw through SMS might grant attackers unauthorized entry to the modem’s working system, enabling them to govern RAM and flash reminiscence with no need authentication or bodily system entry.
Furthermore, investigations uncovered flaws within the dealing with of MIDlets, Java-based purposes working on the modems. By bypassing digital signature checks, attackers might execute unauthorized code with elevated privileges, posing dangers to knowledge confidentiality and broader community safety.
Evgeny Goncharov, head of Kaspersky ICS CERT, emphasised the potential for widespread disruption throughout varied sectors because of the intensive deployment of those modems.
“These disturbances vary from financial and operational impacts to questions of safety. For the reason that modems are usually built-in in a matryoshka-style inside different options, with merchandise from one vendor stacked atop these from one other, compiling a listing of affected finish merchandise is difficult,” he stated.
“Affected distributors should undertake intensive efforts to handle dangers, with mitigation usually possible solely on the telecom operators’ aspect.”
Learn extra on router safety: US Thwarts Volt Hurricane Cyber-Espionage Marketing campaign Via Router Disruption
To defend towards this menace, Kaspersky really useful disabling nonessential SMS messaging capabilities and implementing rigorous digital signature verification for MIDlets. In addition they urged stakeholders to regulate bodily entry to units and conduct common safety audits and updates.
The vulnerabilities have been shared with the producer, however the intricate provide chain involving Gemalto (now underneath Thales), and subsequently Telit, complicates mitigation efforts.
