Security Experts:

Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Mobile & Wireless

Critical Baicells Device Vulnerability Can Expose Telecoms Networks to Snooping

A critical vulnerability affecting wireless communications base stations from Baicells can be exploited to cause disruption or take complete control of data and voice traffic.

A critical vulnerability affecting wireless communication base stations from Baicells Technologies can be exploited to cause disruption in telecom networks or take complete control of data and voice traffic, according to a researcher.

Baicells Technologies is a US-based telecommunications equipment provider for 4G and 5G networks. The company says more than 100,000 of its base stations are deployed across 64 countries around the world. 

Cyber offensive researcher Rustam Amin discovered that at least some of Baicells’ Nova base station products are affected by a critical command injection vulnerability that can be exploited remotely without authentication by sending specially crafted HTTP requests to the targeted device.

Exploitation of the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-24508, can allow an attacker to run shell commands with root privileges and take complete control of a device, Amin told SecurityWeek. 

The researcher explained that an attacker could, for instance, easily shut down a device to cause disruption. In addition, they could take full control over the traffic and phone calls going over a targeted network. A hacker could obtain information such as phone numbers, IMEI, and location data. 

However, conducting such an attack is not an easy task and it requires specific knowledge of the targeted network. 

Amin told SecurityWeek that there are more than 1,150 devices exposed to the internet, mostly located in the United States. 

Baicells published an advisory to inform customers about the vulnerability on January 24. The researcher said the vendor was quick to respond to his notification and quick to issue a patch. 

Nova 227, 233, 243 and 246 base stations are affected. The security hole has been patched with the release of version 3.7.11.3.

The vendor’s advisory only mentions Nova products as being impacted, but the researcher believes other products could be impacted as well. 

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published an advisory last week to inform organizations about CVE-2023-24508.

Amin recently also discovered serious vulnerabilities in Econolite EOS traffic controller software, which can be exploited to control traffic lights.

Related: OT Security Firm Warns of Safety Risks Posed by Alerton Building System Vulnerabilities

Related: US Details Chinese Attacks Against Telecoms Providers

Related: Cisco Patches High-Severity Vulnerabilities in Communications, Networking Products

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join this webinar to learn best practices that organizations can use to improve both their resilience to new threats and their response times to incidents.

Register

Join this live webinar as we explore the potential security threats that can arise when third parties are granted access to a sensitive data or systems.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Vulnerabilities

Less than a week after announcing that it would suspended service indefinitely due to a conflict with an (at the time) unnamed security researcher...

Application Security

Drupal released updates that resolve four vulnerabilities in Drupal core and three plugins.

Risk Management

The supply chain threat is directly linked to attack surface management, but the supply chain must be known and understood before it can be...

Vulnerabilities

Apple has released updates for macOS, iOS and Safari and they all include a WebKit patch for a zero-day vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-23529.

Cloud Security

VMware vRealize Log Insight vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker to take full control of a target system.

Application Security

A CSRF vulnerability in the source control management (SCM) service Kudu could be exploited to achieve remote code execution in multiple Azure services.

IoT Security

Lexmark warns of a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability impacting over 120 printer models, for which PoC code has been published.

Vulnerabilities

GoAnywhere MFT users warned about a zero-day remote code injection exploit that can be targeted directly from the internet