Lumen Blog
blog.lumen.com · Company blog · on HN since 2021
The Lumen blog hosts Black Lotus Labs research on malware, router compromises, and network threats.
What HN saysHN links it for security research on router malware and CLDAP reflection attacks. A commenter calls one write-up a fascinating read.
17HN people shared it
6linked it in comments
11stories submitted
504story points
2 years agolast shared
2021people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1ZuoRAT Hijacks Soho Routers to Silently Stalk Networks3 people · 6 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 2The Pumpkin Eclipse2 people · 355 points · first shared 2024 · 157 comments on HN
- 3Windows subsystem for linux wsl threats2 people · first shared 2022
- 4Black Lotus Labs uncovers Linux executables deployed as stealth Windows loaders1 people · 128 points · first shared 2021 · 43 comments on HN
- 5Chaos is a Go-based Swiss army knife of malware1 people · 5 points · first shared 2022 · 1 comments on HN
- 6New Cuttlefish malware intercepts router traffic, steals credentials1 people · 2 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 7Derailing the Raptor Train1 people · 2 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 8Pulling Back the Curtain: Development and Testing for Low Latency Dash Support1 people · 2 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 9New Konni Campaign Targets Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs1 people · 2 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 10The J-Magic Show: Magic Packets and Where to Find Them1 people · 1 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 11Qakbot: Retool, Reinfect, Recycle1 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
- 12The darkside of themoon1 people · first shared 2024
- 13Cldap reflectors on the rise despite best practice1 people · first shared 2022
What HN people wrote when they linked it
lucb1e · 2022-10-31
TL;DR of Ars: Connectionless LDAP
Actual article that Ars writes about: https://blog.lumen.com/cldap-reflectors-on-the-rise-despite-best-pract…
Actual news (less vague title than Ars'): the number of vulnerable systems has increased ("from the 7K range to over 12K" "over the last 12 months"). Only 15% stays online longer than a year, though, so it seems that most admins catch on after a while. "[T]he Connectionless Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (CLDAP) [has a] Bandwidth Amplification Factor (BAF) of 56 to 70x".
Actionable advice for Windows Server owners is provided at the bottom of both articles.
---
> [heading] A never-ending arms race
Are there still protocols newly put into production that do not take reflection attacks into account? In my experience, it's all legacy. And don't more and more ISPs enforce BCP38 (http://bcp38.info)?
Not sure this headline of Ars' is true.
jamal-kumar · 2022-06-23
Hi OP here
In my experience I think the biggest bottleneck that I've found is filesystem performance. FFS (Fast File System) is pretty freakin slow, and you should really consider redundancy options in case one of the drives fails because its tolerance for recovery from failure isn't the best. It definitely isn't the most optimal or sometimes even viable solution for when you need performance on the filesystem to be high.
Given these things though chances are a lot lower that someone finds something filesystem-level which constitutes a way to hide malicious code or whatever (For example NTFS and hiding malware in Alternative Data Streams [1] or messing around with timestamps [2], or local privilege escalation in Linux's filesystem layer being a big vector for attack lately [3] - Hell even WSL mounting /mnt/c/ as chmod 777 which can wreck some real havok in something as basic as a few lines of python or ruby like stealing your browser session cookies [4] or just wrecking your windows install by deleting system32 like a bad prank from a decade ago [5])
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4MBzeni9Eo
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666281720300159
[3] https://blog.qualys.com/vulnerabilities-threat-research/2021/07/20/seq…
[4] https://blog.lumen.com/windows-subsystem-for-linux-wsl-threats/
[5]…
btown · 2024-09-26
If you're vulnerable to attacks from the LAN, you're vulnerable to your wi-fi router (or your coffee shop/workplace's router) being compromised, which is quite common; see e.g. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/mirai-botnet-targets-22… and https://blog.lumen.com/the-pumpkin-eclipse/
Assuming that most routers are silently compromised, with their command-and-control operators just waiting for an exploit like this one, is almost par for the course these days!
gnabgib · 2024-03-26
The article from the security researchers is a fascinating read: https://blog.lumen.com/the-darkside-of-themoon/
optionalsquid · 2022-06-30
There's a lot more information in the Black Lotus Labs blog post that Ars links to:
> However, as of the time of this writing, we have only been able to obtain the exploit script for JCG-Q20 model routers. In this case, the actor exploited known CVEs (CVE-2020-26878 and CVE-2020-26879)
> The device types consisted of, but were not limited to: Cisco RV 320, 325 and 420; Asus RT-AC68U, RT-AC530, RT-AC68P and RT-AC1900U; DrayTek Vigor 3900 and unspecified NETGEAR devices.
https://blog.lumen.com/zuorat-hijacks-soho-routers-to-silently-stalk-n…
ev1 · 2022-05-29
This is a spam site.
Actual link: https://blog.lumen.com/windows-subsystem-for-linux-wsl-threats/