Re: IOS Rookit: the sky isn't falling (yet)

["Christopher Morrow" <morrowc.lists () gmail com>]

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 8:42 AM, Alexander Harrowell
<a.harrowell () gmail com> wrote:
> > An alternative rootkit ? Privilege level 16 used by the Lawful Intercept
> > [12] feature could be abused to do some of this too. Or the other way
> > around: use a "patched" IOS to keep an eye on Law Enforcement's >operations
> on the router as privilege level 15 doesn't allow it and the only
> > alternative is to sniff the traffic export.
>
> The combination of rootkits and specially privileged Lawful Intercept
> functions is a very dangerous one. This was precisely what was exploited in
> the now-legendary and still unsolved Vodafone Greece hack.

to be clear though, the LI functions on cisco are audit-able (assuming
the ios is still cisco not patched/hacked) you just have to snmp-v3 to
audit the activities... which most mediation devices have to do
because the settings don't get committed to config so upon system
reload they have to be re-set to baseline again.

-Chris