{"id":69826,"date":"2014-06-12T16:06:58","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T20:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbach.net\/blog\/index.php\/"},"modified":"2021-08-25T21:14:59","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T01:14:59","slug":"server-management-security-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/server-management-security-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"Server Management Security Hole"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Server<\/a>Dan Farmer<\/a>, security researcher and creator of the SATAN vulnerability scanner,<\/a> teamed up with HD Moore<\/a>, chief research officer at Rapid7<\/a> and lead architect of the Metasploit<\/a> penetration testing framework found 230,000 publicly accessible <\/strong>Out-Of-Band management<\/a> interfaces on the Internet<\/strong>. Many of these systems were running software that dates back to 2001.<\/p>\n

Out-Of-Band server management<\/h3>\n

\"Out-Of-Band<\/a>According to PCWorld<\/em><\/a>, the Out-Of-Band (OOB) management<\/strong> interfaces expose servers to the Internet through microcontrollers embedded into the motherboard that run independently of the main OS<\/strong> and provide monitoring and administration functions. These\u00a0microcontrollers are called\u00a0Baseboard Management Controllers<\/strong> (BMCs). BMC’s are part of the Intelligent Platform Management Interface<\/strong> (IPMI)<\/a>, a standardized interface made up of a variety of sensors and controllers that allow administrators to manage servers remotely<\/strong> when they\u2019re shut down or unresponsive, but are still connected to the power supply.<\/p>\n

BMCs are embedded systems<\/strong> that have their own firmware\u2014usually based on Linux<\/a><\/strong>. It\u2019s an OS-agnostic and pervasive protocol. Initially developed by Intel<\/a> (INTC<\/a>), Dell<\/a> (DELL<\/a>), HP<\/a> (HPQ<\/a>), and other large equipment manufacturers. It was designed to help manage OOB or Lights-Out communication.<\/p>\n

Rebranded by OEM manufacturers<\/h3>\n

\"Lights-Out<\/a>Pure IPMI is usually implemented as a network service that runs on UDP port 623. <\/strong>It can either piggyback on the server\u2019s network port or may use a dedicated Ethernet port. Vendors take IPMI as a base and add on a variety of services like mail, SNMP, and Web GUIs, and then rebrand the new package:<\/p>\n