A scheme that gives U.S. law enforcement authorities with a warrant access to networking equipment could also be exploited by illegal snoopers.
Tom Cross, manager of X-Force research, a security unit at IBM, discovered this after reviewing details of a lawful intercept scheme used to access equipment made by the networking giant Cisco. Cross says he identified weaknesses in the communication protocol that could let hackers perform illegal wiretaps. Cross focused on Cisco because it's the only company to have made the details of its system public, but he believes similar vulnerabilities exist with other intercept schemes.
"It's not just the router vendor and the [Internet service provider] who have an interest in how this interface is built," Cross said during a presentation at Black Hat DC, a computer-security conference held in Washington, DC. "We all do."
Many networking and Internet companies have built backdoors into their systems to deal with a growing number of Internet wiretap requests. These backdoors provide members of law enforcement who have a warrant with immediate access to communications. But there is growing concern that these avenues could inadvertently make it easier for hackers to steal information. The espionage that prompted Google to consider pulling out of China last month drew attention to the existence of these wiretap backdoors after a prominent security expert suggested that such a system may have been used to infiltrate Google's network.
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