Thousands of Google Chromecast Devices Hijacked to Promote PewDiePie

Jan 3, 2019

A group of hackers has hijacked tens of thousands of Google’s
Chromecast streaming dongles, Google Home smart speakers and smart
TVs with built-in Chromecast technology in recent weeks by
exploiting a bug that’s allegedly been ignored by Google for almost
five years.

The attackers, who go by Twitter handles @HackerGiraffe and
@j3ws3r, managed to hijack Chromecasts’ feeds and display a pop-up,
spreading a security warning as well as controversial YouTube star
PewDiePie propaganda.

The hackers are the same ones who hijacked more than 50,000
internet-connected printers worldwide late last year by exploiting
vulnerable printers to print out flyers asking everyone to
subscribe to PewDiePie YouTube channel.
^[1]

This time, the hackers remotely scanned the internet for compatible
devices, including Chromecasts, exposed to the internet through
poorly configured routers that have Universal Plug and Play [UPnP] enabled by default.

The hackers then exploited a design flaw in Chromecast that
allowed them to access the devices and hijack their media streams
to display a video message (as shown below) on connected
televisions without authentication.

“YOUR Chromecast/Smart TV is exposed to the public internet and is
exposing sensitive information about you! To find more about what
to do and how to fix this, visit https://bit.ly/CastHack for more
information,” the message reads.

Besides security warnings, the hackers again took a chance to
promote PewDiePie—a famous YouTuber from Sweden who is known for
his game commentary and pranks and has had the most subscribers on
YouTube since 2013.

The hackers even set up a dedicated website (now been taken down) for their
hack, which they dubbed “CastHack,” with a live counter displaying
the total number of exposed devices and how many of them have been
forced to play video in support of PewDiePie.

CastHack can be used to collect all kinds of data from victim’s
homes, including which devices their Chromecasts or Google Home is
connected to over Wi-Fi, which Bluetooth devices it was paired
with, how long it has been on, which WiFi networks it had
previously connected to and what alarms have been set.

Moreover, an attacker can also remotely force affected devices into
playing media of their choice, rename devices, force factory reset
or reboot the device, force it to forget all WiFi networks, or
force the affected device to pair with new networks.

Interestingly, Google was made aware of the Chromecast
bug ^[3] multiple times since
2014 shortly after the streaming device was launched and also
acknowledged the hack, but the company has decided to ignore the
issue.

Several users have confirmed ^[4]
that their devices were compromised. Users can fix this issue by
just changing their router settings, stop forwarding ports 8008,
8443 or 8009, as well as turning off its Universal Plug and Play
(UPnP) feature until and unless it is needed.

UPnP comes enabled by default on every internet-connected
device, creating a hole in your router’s security that could allow
malware to infiltrate any part of your local network. Hackers have
compromised
UPnP ^[5] several times in the
past.

^[2]

References

^{^}
exploiting vulnerable printers
(thehackernews.com)
^{^}
website
(casthack.thehackergiraffe.com)
^{^}
Chromecast bug
(www.bishopfox.com)
^{^}
confirmed
(www.reddit.com)
^{^}
compromised UPnP
(thehackernews.com)

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OWASP TOP !0

Injection. Injection flaws, such as SQL, NoSQL, OS, and LDAP injection, occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as part of a command or query. The attacker’s hostile data can trick the interpreter into executing unintended commands or accessing data without proper authorization. Broken Authentication. Application functions related to authentication and session management are often implemented incorrectly, allowing attackers to compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens, or to exploit other implementation flaws to assume other users’ identities temporarily or permanently. Sensitive Data Exposure. Many web applications and APIs do not properly protect sensitive data, such as financial, healthcare, and PII. Attackers may steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. Sensitive data may be compromised without extra protection, such as encryption at rest or in transit, and requires special precautions when exchanged with the browser. XML External Entities (XXE). Many older or poorly configured XML processors evaluate external entity references within XML documents. External entities can be used to disclose internal files using the file URI handler, internal file shares, internal port scanning, remote code execution, and denial of service attacks. Broken Access Control. Restrictions on what authenticated users are allowed to do are often not properly enforced. Attackers can exploit these flaws to access unauthorized functionality and/or data, such as access other users’ accounts, view sensitive files, modify other users’ data, change access rights, etc. Security Misconfiguration. Security misconfiguration is the most commonly seen issue. This is commonly a result of insecure default configurations, incomplete or ad hoc configurations, open cloud storage, misconfigured HTTP headers, and verbose error messages containing sensitive information. Not only must all operating systems, frameworks, libraries, and applications be securely configured, but they must be patched/upgraded in a timely fashion. Cross-Site Scripting XSS. XSS flaws occur whenever an application includes untrusted data in a new web page without proper validation or escaping, or updates an existing web page with user-supplied data using a browser API that can create HTML or JavaScript. XSS allows attackers to execute scripts in the victim’s browser which can hijack user sessions, deface web sites, or redirect the user to malicious sites. Insecure Deserialization. Insecure deserialization often leads to remote code execution. Even if deserialization flaws do not result in remote code execution, they can be used to perform attacks, including replay attacks, injection attacks, and privilege escalation attacks. Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities. Components, such as libraries, frameworks, and other software modules, run with the same privileges as the application. If a vulnerable component is exploited, such an attack can facilitate serious data loss or server takeover. Applications and APIs using components with known vulnerabilities may undermine application defenses and enable various attacks and impacts. Insufficient Logging & Monitoring. Insufficient logging and monitoring, coupled with missing or ineffective integration with incident response, allows attackers to further attack systems, maintain persistence, pivot to more systems, and tamper, extract, or destroy data. Most breach studies show time to detect a breach is over 200 days, typically detected by external parties rather than internal processes or monitoring.

Thousands of Google Chromecast Devices Hijacked to Promote PewDiePie

References

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