[OpenWrt-Devel] OpenWRT www version banner a security risk

Daniel Dickinson openwrt at daniel.thecshore.com
Sun Sep 13 10:28:49 EDT 2015


Quite frankly if someone has unintionally exposed LuCI to the internet I 
think they've got a lot bigger problem than exposed version information, 
and that not putting the version information at best delays only very 
slightly a would be attacker.

And for properly configured installs, the version information is 
extremely useful for doing support and such like.

Not that it likely means much, by vote is against such weak bandaid to 
what is fundamentally an issue a user creates for themselves that is 
much larger than the details of what's on the screen.

What would be more relevent solution is for LuCI to have a banner that 
indicates that the LuCI is visible on the WAN, thus alerting the user to 
a misconfiguration, if it is that.

Regards,

Daniel

On 2015-09-13 10:21 AM, MauritsVB wrote:
> At the moment the OpenWRT www login screen provides *very* detailed version information before anyone has even entered a password. It displays not just “15.05” or “Chaos Calmer” but even the exact git version on the banner.
>
> While it’s not advised to open this login screen to the world, fact is that it does happen intentionally or accidentally. Just a Google search for “Powered by LuCI Master (git-“ will provide many accessible OpenWRT login screens, including exact version information.
>
> As soon as someone discovers a vulnerability in a OpenWRT version all an attacker needs to do is perform a Google search to find many installations with versions that are vulnerable (even if a patch is already available).
>
> In the interest of hardening the default OpenWRT install, can I suggest that by default OpenWRT doesn’t disclose the version (not even 15.05 or “Chaos Calmer”) on the login screen? For extra safety I would even suggest to leave “OpenWRT” off the login screen, the only people who should use this screen already know it’s running OpenWRT.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Maurits
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