[HN Gopher] MacStealer allows for WiFi client isolation bypasses...
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       MacStealer allows for WiFi client isolation bypasses
       (CVE-2022-47522)
        
       Author : oger
       Score  : 45 points
       Date   : 2023-04-15 17:46 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | daveidol wrote:
       | Funny this is exactly the same name as the macOS malware also
       | being discussed on the HN front page:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35581375
        
         | Maursault wrote:
         | Homophones are aggravatingly common. Can a bear bear it? It was
         | just a fluke I caught a fluke using a fluke on a fluke while a
         | fluke waved nearby. I took a bow on the bow. etc.
        
           | aaronbrethorst wrote:
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffal.
           | ..
        
       | supernetworks wrote:
       | We designed SPR to address problems with wifi isolation. Every
       | wifi device runs in an isolated subnet and individual VLAN. Mac
       | spoofing is not possible since a device's MAC identity is
       | combined with a device-specific PSK. You can check out the
       | project here: https://www.supernetworks.org/
       | 
       | While we were not aware of these protocol flaws specifically, the
       | project was inspired by fundamental weaknesses in secure wifi
       | isolation. One of the attacks that's demonstrated in the scripts
       | but not in the academic paper -- is that most routers will route
       | UDP/IP packets between devices even when they are "isolated", so
       | there are problems with most guest wifi networks even before mac
       | stealer type attacks come into play.
        
         | sargun wrote:
         | So, a long time ago, I implemented a similar system on top of
         | some enterprise access points -- broadcast storms were just
         | killing our Wi-Fi. The problem was mDNS / bonjour didn't work
         | in this setup, although there was a way to use a routable
         | multicast address, we couldn't get printers working.
         | 
         | Eventually we hacked something up where the AP controller could
         | do proxy ARP, and google cloud print.
         | 
         | Do yall have a better solution?
        
           | supernetworks wrote:
           | Yes -- except for limited wireguard support, usability for
           | multicast is mostly solved. SPR services mDNS and
           | Zeroconf/SSDP with a udp proxy[1].
           | 
           | [1] https://github.com/spr-
           | networks/super/blob/main/multicast_ud...
        
       | xoa wrote:
       | Very interesting looking research and examples. That at least as
       | of their work they think VLANs can help mitigate it though is an
       | important thing:
       | 
       | > _We remark that our attack cannot bypass VLANs. In other words,
       | based on current experiments, our attack cannot be used to
       | exploit a device in another VLAN._
       | 
       | This is mostly how I've rolled things out, authorized users all
       | get put on their own VLANs with the idea that traffic gets forced
       | through the router and as another isolation layer. This applies
       | to all authorized traffic. I say "mostly" though because at least
       | two sites are run with a more generic "Guest" setup which is
       | flat, and does indeed depend on client isolation. So while guest
       | users would be unable to attack anything on all the other VLANs,
       | they could attack each other. This then is another major
       | motivation for:
       | 
       | > _Note that when using multi-PSK (a.ka. per-station PSK or
       | identity PSK), you can put clients in different VLANs depending
       | on the password that they use. In other words, you can use a VLAN
       | for each password. This prevents clients with different passwords
       | from attacking each other._
       | 
       | MPSK (or "PPSK") was the final driving reason in beginning a
       | switchover from UniFi to Omada for me, because it dramatically
       | simplifies using VLANs even for completely unmanaged BYOD
       | situations (a college for example). If everything under the sun
       | supported 802.1x auth and the whole certificate situation was
       | much better it wouldn't be an issue, but as it is getting huge
       | numbers of devices (not just IOT, everything from TV appliances
       | and consoles to a lot of new printers) onto the right VLAN was a
       | pain requiring manual effort with MAC auth bypass which would be
       | easily hoovered up too. MPSKs are a fairly elegant solution to
       | that, you can just give people their own password or passwords,
       | and then they can just use those as they would any typical
       | WPA2-PSK network and everything ends up on the assigned VLANs
       | without further IT assistance required. It's such a big feature
       | that I think going forward I'm going to consider it essential.
       | Also makes it easy to have even more IOT separation, every single
       | last category of device (well, at least up to thousands) can be
       | on its own VLAN no problem, and all the typical irritating
       | """smarts""" of IOT stuff like where things of the same device
       | manufacturer try to share WiFi password all is controlled and
       | does as it should too.
       | 
       | One thing I would be curious about though was how this works with
       | full virtual SDNs, which is now how all important stuff gets
       | done, simply not trusting the physical network at all. They talk
       | about traffic encrypted at a higher layer:
       | 
       | > _We remark that intercepted traffic may be protected by higher-
       | layer encryption, such as TLS and HTTPS. Nevertheless, even if
       | higher-layer encryption is being used, our attack still reveals
       | the IP address that a victim is communicating with. This in turn
       | reveals the websites that a victim is visiting, which can be
       | sensitive information on its own._
       | 
       | But I assume that if using WireGuard or Nebula or the like,
       | particularly the former in a typical wheel/spoke setup, this leak
       | would also be quelled? The VPN goes to either the router or other
       | endpoint which can be isolated, and that then relays to the final
       | destination, so being able to tell where the VPN traffic was
       | going wouldn't reveal much. The mesh aspect of Nebula might
       | reveal more, since it'd tell what other nodes were being
       | communicated with, but as those are going to be internal and
       | protected except via Nebula traffic I'm not sure if that's
       | critical either, going out to websites would still mean getting
       | proxied?
       | 
       | Anyway, guess another reminder that things lower down the stack
       | can have surprises.
        
       | mittermayr wrote:
       | In a time before HTTPS (which wasn't too long ago), this would
       | have been a lot more concerning. Of course, the extraction of a
       | target IP may be interesting, but a device currently sends so
       | many requests once it connects to the internet, anything from
       | Apple/MS to all and every piece of software checking for
       | updates... it sounds quite hard to nail the right timing and get
       | a spicy result out of this. And once the attack happens, the
       | target is disconnected and that was your one shot, no? Also, the
       | URL params, headers, Cookies, etc are all encrypted at this
       | point.
       | 
       | Not to diminish the effort and write up, I fully get how exciting
       | this is to discover, but it feels a bit more at home in a bug
       | report for router firmware. Am I missing something?
        
         | akira2501 wrote:
         | > Also, the URL params, headers, Cookies, etc are all encrypted
         | at this point.
         | 
         | To external sites, sure. To internal ones? I would not be so
         | sure.
        
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       (page generated 2023-04-15 23:00 UTC)