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jlward4thyesterday at 3:41 PM3 repliesview on HN

I recently discovered a similar concerning security issue with my KVM. In my case it was a pretty standard KVM for multiple machines to share a keyboard, mouse, and screen but also Ethernet. One day while looking at my home network I noticed the KVM had its own IP and was transferring GBs of data everyday. I quickly blocked it from my network. But having used it for a number of months I worried that with screen capture and access to all my input devices, someone could have gotten access to pretty much everything I use. I wasn’t able to figure out if any data was actually being sent off my network and I really didn’t want to put myself in any more risk so I just threw it in an electronics recycling bin. Pretty scary what a network connected KVM could maliciously do.


Replies

Renaudyesterday at 3:56 PM

Shame you threw it away. It would have been useful to collect the traffic with Wireshark and share that with info about the device in a post or a blog for others to investigate and be warned about that brand and model.

stragiesyesterday at 3:58 PM

Why did you not just login to the device, and switched off "Broadcast to multicast", or changed the destination address?

Edit: Some brands of Network-KVM use this, so that you can control the target device from another device, like e.g. an App on a tablet. That way you don't have to stand next to the target device in the noisy and cold machine room

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CoastalCoderyesterday at 4:20 PM

Is it possible for you to name the KVM model?

It sounds like a potential risk is to the public.

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