Security News > 2020 > February > This is not Huawei to reassure people about Beijing's spying eyes: Trivial backdoor found in HiSilicon's firmware for net-connected cams, recorders

CCTV equipment maker Xiongmai effectively built a poorly hidden, insecure backdoor into potentially millions of surveillance devices, it is claimed.

A hardware probester going by the name of Vladislav Yarmak alleged this week that China-based Xiongmai - best known for its wide-open security cameras - left a remote debugging and management tool in its firmware, which is used in network-connected surveillance video recorders.

"Devices with vulnerable firmware has the macGuarder or dvrHelper process running and accepting connections on TCP port 9530," wrote Yarmak.

"More recent firmware versions had Telnet access and debug port disabled by default. Instead they had open port 9530/tcp which was used to accept special command to start telnet daemon and enable shell access with static password which is the same for all devices."

"It is not practical to expect security fixes for the firmware from the vendor. Owners of such devices should consider switching to alternatives. However, if a replacement is not possible, device owners should completely restrict network access to these devices to trusted users. Ports involved in this vulnerability is 23/tcp, 9530/tcp, 9527/tcp, but earlier researches indicate there is no confidence other services implementation is solid and doesn't contain RCE vulnerabilities." .

News URL

https://go.theregister.co.uk/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/04/hisilicon_camera_backdoor/