A critical vulnerability in NUUO software could allow attackers to remotely view video feeds and tamper with the recordings of hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras, Tenable reveals.

The bug, which Tenable researchers called Peekaboo, supposedly impacts over 100 brands and 2,500 different models of cameras that are integrated with NUUO’s software. Providing access to usernames and passwords, the vulnerability could be exploited to manipulate cameras and take them offline.

NUUO’s software and devices are widely used for web-based video monitoring and surveillance in multiple industries, including retail, transportation, education, government, and banking. The vulnerability was discovered in NVRMini 2, a network-attached storage device and network video recorder.

The vulnerability, an unauthenticated stack buffer overflow, could lead to remote code execution. Tracked as CVE-2018-1149, it features a CVSSv2 Base score of 10.0.

“Once exploited, Peekaboo would give cybercriminals access to the control management system (CMS), exposing the credentials for all connected video surveillance cameras. Using root access on the NVRMini2 device, cybercriminals could disconnect the live feeds and tamper with security footage,” Tenable says.

The bug was found in NVRMini 2 firmware versions older than 3.9.0. Despite being publicly revealed, the flaw remains unpatched, though a fix is in the works.

“In the meantime, users are urged to control and restrict access to their NUUO NVRMini2 deployments and limit this to legitimate users from trusted networks only. Owners of devices connected directly to the internet are especially at risk, as potential attackers can target them directly over the internet. Affected end users must disconnect these devices from the internet until a patch is released,” Tenable says.

The issue resides in the use of an open-source web server with support for executable binaries via the common gateway interface (CGI) protocol. One of the CGI binaries, 'cgi_system', handles various commands and actions that require the user be authenticated, but the cookie parameter’s session ID size isn’t checked during authentication, thus allowing for a stack buffer overflow in the sprintf function.

The vulnerability can result in remote code execution with “root” or administrator privileges, Tenable’s security researchers discovered. Proof-of-concept (PoC) code to demonstrate the bug has been published on GitHub.

In addition to this security flaw, Tenable discovered a backdoor in leftover debug code. Tracked as CVE-2018-1150, the vulnerability has a CVSSv2 Base Score of 4.0.

The backdoor is enabled if a file named /tmp/moses exists, the researchers explain. The backdoor can be used to list all user accounts on the system and also allows the change of any account’s password. An attacker abusing the bug could not only view the camera feeds and CCTV recordings, but could also remove a camera from the system entirely.

“This is a very odd artifact. We weren’t able to determine if it’s leftover development code or if it was maliciously added. To be able to activate and utilize the backdoor, an attacker would need to be able to create the file “/tmp/moses,” so the attack would require some form of access or need to be combined with another exploit. Its existence and lack of obfuscation in the code is the real mystery,” Tenable says.

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