AiKaan Cloud Controller uses a single hardcoded SSH private key and the username proxyuser for remote terminal access to all managed IoT/edge devices. When an administrator initiates Open Remote Terminal from the AiKaan dashboard, the controller sends this same static private key to the target device. The device then uses it to establish a reverse SSH tunnel to a remote access server, enabling browser-based SSH access for the administrator. Because the same proxyuser account and SSH key are reused across all customer environments: - An attacker who obtains the key (e.g., by intercepting it in transit, extracting it from the remote access server, or from a compromised admin account) can impersonate any managed device. - They can establish unauthorized reverse SSH tunnels and interact with devices without the owners consent. This is a design flaw in the authentication model: compromise of a single key compromises the trust boundary between the controller and devices.
Weakness
The product contains hard-coded credentials, such as a password or cryptographic key.
Extended Description
There are two main variations:
Potential Mitigations
- For outbound authentication: store passwords, keys, and other credentials outside of the code in a strongly-protected, encrypted configuration file or database that is protected from access by all outsiders, including other local users on the same system. Properly protect the key (CWE-320). If you cannot use encryption to protect the file, then make sure that the permissions are as restrictive as possible [REF-7].
- In Windows environments, the Encrypted File System (EFS) may provide some protection.
- For inbound authentication using passwords: apply strong one-way hashes to passwords and store those hashes in a configuration file or database with appropriate access control. That way, theft of the file/database still requires the attacker to try to crack the password. When handling an incoming password during authentication, take the hash of the password and compare it to the saved hash.
- Use randomly assigned salts for each separate hash that is generated. This increases the amount of computation that an attacker needs to conduct a brute-force attack, possibly limiting the effectiveness of the rainbow table method.
- For front-end to back-end connections: Three solutions are possible, although none are complete.
References