Security News > 2021 > January > NAT Slipstreaming 2.0 Exposes Devices on Internal Networks to Remote Attacks
A newly devised variant of the NAT Slipstreaming attack can be leveraged to compromise any device on the local network, according to researchers at enterprise IoT security firm Armis.
Detailed in late October 2020, the NAT Slipstreaming attack relies on tricking the victim into accessing a specially crafted website and exploits the browser on the device, along with the Application Level Gateway, a connection tracking mechanism in Network Address Translation, firewalls, and routers.
The attack was meant to bypass existing browser-based port restrictions and allow the attacker to remotely access TCP/UDP services on the victim's device, even if it was protected by a firewall or NAT. In a research paper published on Tuesday, Armis security researchers detailed a variant of the attack, dubbed NAT Slipstreaming 2.0, that can bypass mitigations for NAT Slipstreaming, and which also expands the attacker's reach, allowing them to create paths to any device on the internal network.
"This puts embedded, unmanaged, devices at greater risk, by allowing attackers to expose devices located on internal networks, directly to the Internet," the security researchers note.
In devising the new attack variant, Armis' researchers Ben Seri and Gregory Vishnipolsky worked together with Samy Kamkar, the researcher who discovered the original NAT Slipstreaming attack.
The new attack is based on new primitives and allows for connections to any destination ports, fully bypassing the mitigations that browser makers have introduced for NAT Slipstreaming.