The Download
Recent research by Professor Mathy Vanhoef and PhD student Angelos Beitis from KU Leuven University, in collaboration with Top10VPN, has uncovered that over 4 million internet-connected systems—including VPN servers and home routers—are susceptible to attacks due to flaws in tunneling protocols. These protocols, such as IPIP/IP6IP6, GRE/GRE6, 4in6, and 6in4, are designed to encapsulate packets for transmission across networks. However, misconfigurations allow these systems to accept unauthenticated tunneling packets without verifying the sender's identity. Attackers can exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted packets that cause the compromised host to forward malicious traffic to a target, enabling anonymous attacks like denial-of-service (DoS), DNS spoofing, and unauthorized access to internal networks and IoT devices.
What You Can Do
To protect against these vulnerabilities, IT administrators should review and update the configuration of tunneling protocols on all network devices to ensure they do not accept unauthenticated packets. Implementing strict access control lists (ACLs) can help filter and restrict unwanted traffic. Regularly monitoring network traffic for anomalies can aid in the early detection of potential exploitation attempts. Additionally, applying available patches and firmware updates from device manufacturers is crucial to address known security issues. Collaborating with ISPs and network providers to implement broader network-level protections can further enhance security against these types of attacks.
Check your attack surface today with ThreatMate.
To Learn More: