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

  1. 1
    ZuoRAT Hijacks Soho Routers to Silently Stalk Networks
    3 people · 6 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
  2. 2
    The Pumpkin Eclipse
    2 people · 355 points · first shared 2024 · 157 comments on HN
  3. 3
    Windows subsystem for linux wsl threats
    2 people · first shared 2022
  4. 4
  5. 5
    Chaos is a Go-based Swiss army knife of malware
    1 people · 5 points · first shared 2022 · 1 comments on HN
  6. 6
  7. 7
    Derailing the Raptor Train
    1 people · 2 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
    The J-Magic Show: Magic Packets and Where to Find Them
    1 people · 1 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
  11. 11
    Qakbot: Retool, Reinfect, Recycle
    1 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
  12. 12
    The darkside of themoon
    1 people · first shared 2024
  13. 13

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…

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