Forensic Analysis of SOHO Router Binaries

Ness, Clara Beatrice

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DOE OSTI · 2448549

Forensic Analysis of SOHO Router Binaries

Ness, Clara Beatrice

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Abstract

Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) routers are used by millions of consumers across the United States, and are commensurately vulnerable. Forensic analysis of SOHO router firmware helps to understand and mitigate those vulnerabilities. This poster focused particularly on analysis of BusyBox executables, a software suite that provides several Unix utilities in a single file. Three main tools were used to analyze the binaries. BinWalk was used to extract the files, but also to build entropy graphs, extract Linux kernel images, and identify CPU architectures; WiiBin processed the binaries to find endianness, architecture, the percent compressed/encrypted, and compiler data; and @DisCo, a machine learning tool used to determine function similarity in disassembled binaries, analyzed similarities and determined versions of extracted BusyBox files from each router. These tools found that venders from all five routers utilized the same version of the BusyBox software across different firmware updates, demonstrating the importance of constant firmware scrutiny to protect against security vulnerabilities.

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BibTeX RIS

Ness, Clara Beatrice. 2024-08-16. Forensic Analysis of SOHO Router Binaries. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/2448549

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