Security: Cisco Holes and Jail-breaking John Deere DRM
-
iTWire - Cisco pledge to fix all bugs revealed by sec firm Rapid7
Networking giant Cisco has said it has either fixed or will fix bugs revealed in its products by security firm Rapid7, details of which the latter firm released on 11 August.
In a blog post, Rapid7's Jake Baines said the company has found vulnerabilities and non-security issues affecting Cisco Adaptive Security Software, Adaptive Security Device Manager and FirePOWER Services Software for ASA.
Baines described Cisco ASA Software as a “core operating system for the Cisco ASA Family”, adding that Cisco ASA was widely deployed as enterprise-class firewalls that also support VPN, IPS, and many other features.
-
Def Con hacker shows John Deere’s tractors can run Doom
But Sick Codes isn’t just jailbreaking tractors to get them to run Doom. According to a report from Wired, he also devised and presented a new jailbreak that gave him root access to the tractor’s system. This exploit could potentially help farmers bypass software blocks that prevent them from repairing the tractor themselves, something John Deere has come under fire for in the past.
As noted by Wired, Sick Codes was able to obtain “1.5 GB worth of logs” that dealers could use to identify and diagnose problems. But he also found a way to gain root access by soldering controllers directly to the tractor’s circuit board. Unfortunately, gaining root access isn’t all that simple without the right equipment, but Sick Codes told Wired “it would be possible to develop a tool based on the vulnerabilities to more easily execute the jailbreak.”
-
A New Jailbreak for John Deere Tractors Rides the Right-to-Repair Wave
After years of controversy in the US over the “right to repair” the equipment one purchases, the movement seems to have reached a turning point. The White House issued an executive order last year directing the Federal Trade Commission to increase enforcement efforts over practices like voiding warranties for outside repair. That, combined with New York state passing its own right-to-repair law and creative activist pressure, has generated unprecedented momentum for the movement.
-
Oh Deere: Farm hardware jailbroken to run Doom
The project took months to develop, according to Sick Codes. It targeted a John Deere tractor 4240 touchscreen controller with an Arm-compatible NXP I.MX 6 system-on-chip running Wind River Linux 8. There were also devices running Windows CE.