Bizarre attack infects Linksys routers with self-replicating malware

Bizarre attack infects Linksys routers with self-replicating malware

Feb 13th 2014, 18:20, by Dan Goodin

Researchers say they have uncovered an ongoing attack that infects home and small-office wireless routers from Linksys with self-replicating malware, most likely by exploiting a code-execution vulnerability in the device firmware.
Johannes B. Ullrich, CTO of the Sans Institute, told Ars he has been able to confirm that the malicious worm has infected around 1,000 Linksys E1000, E1200, and E2400 routers, although the actual number of hijacked devices worldwide could be higher. Once a device is compromised, it scans the Internet for other vulnerable devices to infect.
The worm works by injecting vulnerable devices with a URL-encoded shell script that carries out the same seek-and-hijack behavior. The exploit may also change some routers' domain name system server to 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4, which are IP addresses used by Google's DNS service. Compromised routers remain infected until they are rebooted. Once the devices are restarted, they appear to return to their normal state.