back to article 'Secure' Wyse thin clients vulnerable to remote exploit bugs

A popular brand of thin client device used by nuclear labs, military contractors and Fortune 100 companies is susceptible to exploits that put entire fleets of the machines in the control of online attackers. Wyse Technologies, maker of the slimmed-down computing devices, touts them as being as secure, "or better" than PCs …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Agge
    Paris Hilton

    vpn anyone?

    Don't you need to be able "see" the devices in order to do that?

    They invented VPN specifically for protection from these kind of attacks

    I don't know who would put their asset management on the DMZ....

    We don't and I don't see anyone running IT in a decent Enterprise shop doing that either!

    Lesson of the day: If you want to sleep easy, have multiple lines of defense

  2. urbanadventurer
    Thumb Up

    To Agge, your comment is as inane as your icon

    Agge, why would you even bother to say that?

    Are you labouring under the impression that attackers always attack from the internet and somehow, despite the proliferation of client side vulnerabilities, never attack from the client and never manage to penetrate beyond the DMZ?

    These security vulnerabilities are not only practical for attackers and penetration testers but expose WYSE's 'secure' marketing claims as unfounded.

  3. Mark Rendle

    Flashback

    I remember using Wyse terminals back in the early nineties. I remember getting upgraded to the 120 from the 50 and thinking it was the dog's.

    They were exploitable back then. We used to echo control characters to /dev/ttyN to lock each other's keyboards, then run libellous sendmail commands while the hapless victim watched.

    </nostalgia for the bad old days>

  4. Joe Greer
    FAIL

    Are you sure this is an issue???

    Thin clients connect to a server via a broker to read email and surf the internet. This would mean on the inside you have soft cushy windows machines owned by outside hackers that are on the same L2 subnet as your thin clients.

    Who wants to target thin clients on the inside, there are far more mac computers to poke at that are on the internet or surfing the web and reading email with Flash, Acrobat and Java.

    We use a different vendor for thin clients and we never use the software out of the box. It takes 62 seconds to image the thin client with the software we use.

  5. Mike Gravgaard
    Grenade

    Hagent.exe

    Hi,

    This is quite funny really - basically the hagent.exe file is used by the Rapport/WDM agent to talk (broadcast) itself to the Rapport/WDM server and start a rapport between the server and client for updates, etc.

    I was trying to make my own version of Rapport/WDM with the standard Wyse Rapport/WDM agent which talked to a custom service (I dislike WDM due to Wyse policies, they drop support in newer versions of WDM for older terminals). I stopped doing this in the end but got quite far (my boss disliked the idea due to lack of Wyse offical support).

    My management then decided to update and take a new 'contract' with Wyse at a large expense.

    Personally if I had the option, I would look at the alternatives to Wyse.

    Mike

  6. Toastan Buttar
    Unhappy

    Ooooh, exploitable !

    Makes you wonder just how secure the Chrome OS will be once Google's own code is running atop the tried and trusted Linux kernel.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    "...I would look at the alternatives to Wyse..."

    Like Sun Ray:

    http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/?p=1650

  8. David Halko
    Go

    Reading the sub-headline...

    Reading the sub-headline "As susceptible as PCs" would make one think that there are millions of exploits for the Wyse terminal.

    A couple of exploits to gain control of the terminal over a decade or more of use is actully pretty good!

    Once Wyse fixes up their firmware, the exploits will all be gone... that is what I call pretty secure, in contrast to "as susceptible"!

  9. Tim Bates

    @David Halko

    One exploit is equally vulnerable as millions. It only takes one to let someone in.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    A house with an open window.

    tim bates ~ One exploit is equally vulnerable as millions

    a house has an unlocked second story window open is not equally as vulnerable as a house with all the windows busted open on the first floor, basement, and with unlocked doors on the handicap accessible entryway

    in the area of security, we are not talking about one person, we are talking about thousands of viruses and worms, each seeking many different exploits - and a single exploit (which could be targeting an unlocked second story window) is not vulnerable as thousands of exploits where groups of exploits are targeting doors, basement windows, and handicap accessible entries. Those millions of other exploits are useless against the single second story unlocked window

    if one weakness in home security makes it as vulnerable as dozens of weaknesses, there would be no value to locks on doors and windows

    i have never seen a security person leave all the doors and windows open on their personal items, just because it is just as vulnerable, because no matter how hard the person tries, there will be at least one exploit unplugged for some period of time, and they are just as vulnerable

    there is no point to virus software or firewalls if one exploit leaves a piece of equipment equally vulnerable as millions

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like