[News] 50 million devices prone to UPnP attack!

There are currently many (millions) of electronic devices that are currently using the very-vulnerable Universal Plug and Play protocol, which are open to security attacks, researchers Rapid7 have found. These devices include printers, routers, media servers and many more that are prone to this attack.UPnP is designed for use inside home networks which allow easy discovery and communication between networked devices. Despite the word "inside", Rapid7 researchers have found more than 80 million external IP addresses that respond to simple communication like SSDP probes, and of 17 million were also exposed through the SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) which allows one to access the web behind the firewall.

Researchers found that over 22 million vulnerable IPs were open to up to eight remote code execution attacks connected to the Portable UPnP SDK, which has been made open-sourced, that were started as early as 2001 by Intel. Just under 7,000 product versions from 1,500 vendors were prone to at least one flaw.

Because of the above reasons, Rapid7's HD Moore has said "We strongly suggest that end users, companies, and ISPs take immediate action to identify and disable any internet-exposed UPnP endpoints in their environments."

He also went on to say "UPnP is pervasive - it is enabled by default on many home gateways, nearly all network printers, and devices ranging from IP cameras to network storage servers."

Home users are recommended to make sure that UPnP is disabled on their home networks and any other device which features it.

If you would like to check which products have been affected, three lists have been published online. The products affected by the UPnP SOAP protocol can be found here. The Intel Portable UPnP SDK flaws can be found here. And lastly, the MiniUPnP flaws can be found here.