full-disclosure - Re: [FD] Netgear Router Administrative Web Interface Lacks Transport Encryption By Default

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Message-ID: <CAAnPYQ76wBHNym2LhY4T-wmhSCoFe=ZcGWoNNED39-TSYTiRWw@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2025 13:04:42 +0100
From: Gynvael Coldwind <gynvael@...dwind.pl>
To: Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney@...sp.org>
Cc: fulldisclosure@...lists.org
Subject: Re: [FD] Netgear Router Administrative Web Interface Lacks
 Transport Encryption By Default

Hi,

This isn't really a problem a vendor can solve in firmware (apart from
offering configuration via cloud, which has its own issues).
Even if they would enable TLS/SSL by default, it would just give one a
false sense of security, since:
- the certificates would be invalid (public CAs don't give out certs for IP
addresses),
- they would be easy to clone (due to being self-signed and/or being easy
to extract from a similar device),
- and most users would have no idea how to verify it anyway (they would
just click through warnings).
So effectively it can still be MITMed.

This is one of the problems that has to be solved on the user side, i.e.
initialize (first boot) the device in a safe environment and upload a
proper certificate (this requires an internal CA), and disable HTTP. And
then train the staff to always configure these from a browser that trusts
the internal CA.

Cheers,
--
Gynvael Coldwind
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