Hello Swinog Users,

Has anyone of you received some info from MELANI / GovCERT about some IoT vulnerability you might be exposed to?

Well I did and I found very very strange things in this report.

1. The report contains only a timestamp, an IP address and a DNS name. Not which vulnerability, not potential loopholes, traces or ANYTHING useful to analyze whats happening.

2. The single IP address in the report is not in my network (I used to have that IP range in the past but I sold it in 2016. So long long ago. ) 3. The abuse email they sent the report to is not in the whois of that network. 4. The DNS name used in the report is not the reverse PTR of that IP. Nor does the forward DNS point to that IP. 5. The DNS name points to a host in my network but that host is definitively not a IoT device which has any kind of default password. Its a solid Linux machine with a up to date distribution with 2 usernames only on it with very secure passwords and only one specific application running which doesn't talk to outside my network at all. If that machine would have gotten hacked, it would surprise me very much. At least I have found nothing unusual on that IP. No unexpected network activity, CPU load, processes etc.

So MELANI tells me my big fat Linux server is now a IOT device which has default passwords and I should simply do a factory default (and by doing this erase terabytes of data). I should look for "_SOMETHING_" without specifying it on SOME IP I don't own. And they address such a report to me while I am not the abuse contact of this SOME_IP. Furthermore SOME_IP looked not being reachable anyway when I tested.

So the report contains ZERO usable information. The only thing which might not be wrong in the report is the timestamp (but thats not verified neither).

I am shocked that a government entity which should take security seriously, is sending out such utter nonsense reports and wasting all our precious time. If they got such reports from 3rd parties it should contain verifiable information and USEFUL information. Apparently MELANI has become some kind of open CERT-SMTP relay without authentication.

Let me know your experiences.

Andrea Fink Fink Telecom Services --.- .-. -

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ENGLISH VERSION

Dear Sir or Madam

You are receiving this email because your email address is either registered as abuse contact for AS6775 in our system or because your email address is referenced as abuse contact for AS6775 at RIPE.

The Reporting and Analysis Centre for Information Assurance (MELANI) has been informed by a partner about one of more devices (IoT - "Internet of Things") in your network that are likely to be compromised by Hackers and that are being used for malicious purpose. Attached to this email, you can find a list of all IP addresses that has been reported to us in the past 24 hours.

The affected devices have most probably been compromised by hackers, likely due to the usage of a a default password. Therefore, hackers where able to install a malware (Mirai) on the said devices

We therefore recommend you to identify the affected devices or customers, securing them and clean them up (e.g. by doing a factory reset). An overview of recommendations concerning IoT devices can be found on our website:

Security in the internet of things (IoT): https://www.melani.admin.ch/iotsecurity https://www.melani.admin.ch/iotsecurity