Home router security to be tested in upcoming hacking contest

Researchers are gearing up to hack an array of different home routers during a contest next month at the Defcon 22 security conference.

The contest is called SOHOpelessly Brokena nod to the small office/home office space targeted by the productsand follows a growing number of large scale attacks this year against routers and other home embedded systems.

The competition is organized by security consultancy firm Independent Security Evaluators and advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and will have two separate challenges.

The first challenge, known as Track 0, will require researchers to demonstrate exploits for previously unknown, or zero-day, vulnerabilities in a number of popular off-the-shelf consumer wireless routers.

The preselected target devices are: the Linksys EA6500, ASUS RT-AC66U, TRENDnet TEW-812DRU, Netgear Centria WNDR4700, Netgear WNR3500U/WNR3500L, TP-Link TL-WR1043ND, D-Link DIR-865L and Belkin N900 DB. The EFFs upcoming Open Wireless Router firmware will also be up for hacking.

Different types of attacks will earn the researchers a different number of points. For example, exploits that result in full router control will be awarded 5,000 points, while those that only cause a denial-of-service condition or low-value information leakage will get 1,000 points. There are also penalties for attacks that require human interaction, authenticated sessions or administrative credentials.

Researchers will prepare their exploits ahead of time and are required to report the vulnerabilities they find to the affected manufacturers ahead of the actual contest. This wont influence their chance of success during the competition because the attacked routers will run specific versions of firmware that have already been announced and wont be updated.

The second challenge, or Track 1, is a capture-the-flag contest where individuals or teams will compete to finish ten objective-based attack scenarios against known vulnerable routers.

The prizes have yet to be announced, but the contest, which is similar to the Pwn2Own hacking competition that targets browsers and mobile devices, is likely to at least bring router vulnerabilities and risks into the spotlight.

Its no secret that the security of routers, and embedded devices in general, has lagged behind that of computer OSes and software. For years researchers have found critical vulnerabilities in a large number of routers, ranging from basic programming errors and hardcoded credentials to more complex flaws in protocol implementations or the administration interface.

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Home router security to be tested in upcoming hacking contest