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XSS Attack using SMS to Optus/Huawei E960 HSDPA Router



XSS Attack using SMS to Optus/Huawei E960 HSDPA Router

Synopsis
--------

Huawei E960 HSDPA Router (firmware version 246.11.04.11.110sp04) is vulnerable 
to XSS attack using SMS. One of the feature of this router is the ability to 
send and receive SMS through its web interface. The SMS text is presented 
unescaped/unfiltered on the inbox view, and an attacker can craft malicious 
short messages to gain control over victims router.

Details
--------
The first 32 characters of every incoming SMS is presented in unescaped form in 
the inbox view. The 32 characters limit can be overcome by using several 
messages, and inserting javascript comment to merge the current message with 
the next one. 

Example:

First message ends with /* which will comment the all the HTML code up to the 
second message

<script>alert('hello '/*

and the second message will start with */ that will close the comment and 
continue the script:

*/+'world');</script>

Note that newest message is presented first, so the order of the SMS sending 
must be reversed.

Impact
------
An attacker can 
- get victim's PPP password by accessing /js/connection.js
- disconnect victim's internet connection
- send SMS with victim's router
- gain access to victim's WIFI password

Recovery
--------
After an attack is performed, the inbox page can not be used to delete the 
received messages (because the delete button doesn't work anymore). To remove 
offending messages from the inbox, telnet to the router with username 'admin' 
and password 'admin'. Huawei E960 uses busybox shell, so standard rm command 
can be used to remove the messages (it is located at /tmp/sms/inbox_sms). After 
removing the message content, the deleted messages will still be in the inbox 
index, but it can now be removed from the inbox page.


Credits
-------
Rizki Wicaksono (www.ilmuhacking.com) found this vulnerability. The Indonesian 
article at 
http://www.ilmuhacking.com/web-security/xss-attack-using-sms-huawei-e960-hsdpa-router/
 gives more detail about this vulnerability. This English translation/summary 
was done by Yohanes Nugroho.