Abdullah is expected to lead the company’s continuing efforts to establish itself as the most channel friendly company while also implementing strategies that are aimed at increase effectiveness of marketing and communication to maximize the recall factor among channel partners.Ĭommenting on his new role, Abdullah said: “We will continue to build channel capacity planning, which places key emphasis on recruiting new partners, implementing an effective enablement plan, training and extending the consistent support for all routes to market to enable channel partners growing with Zyxel and increasing their profitability. Under his new position with the company, Abdullah will oversee the Middle East’s channel operations–placing key focus on identifying, mentoring and managing potential as well as current partners to grow in regional business of Zyxel. This story only goes to show that security appliances themselves can make a network less secure if they are misconfigured, set up shoddily, or are easily accessible.Zyxel Communications appointed Mamoun Abdullah as the company’s General Manager and Head of Channel for the Middle East region. The number of affected customers is not known at this time because it seems that the devices attacked had their web management publicly accessible and are not locked down. Zyxel officials wrote that reports about the attacks first came from users in Europe, at which point the company says it became aware of a sophisticated threat actor trying to access a subset of its devices.

When security devices compromise the security

It is still unclear whether the weaknesses under attack are novel or were known. It continued to explain how the attacks happen, saying that once the hackers gain access to a device through WAN successfully, they can bypass authentication and create SSL VPN tunnels with unknown user accounts like /zyxel_vpn_test/, /zyxel_ts/, and /zyxel_silvpn/, to then manipulate configurations on the device. The email, which was shared on Twitter, said that the company is aware of the situation and is doing its best to investigate and find a resolution. When the attackers gain access to the device, they can connect to previously unknown accounts hardwired into it. The email is succinct but appears to confirm that the attacks target devices that are internet-facing/connected. Specifically, they are in the USG/ZyWALL, USG FLEX, ATP, and VPN series running on-premise ZLD firmware. In an email, the company said that the targeted devices include appliances fitted with remote management or are SSL VPN enabled.

Network device manufacturer Zyxel, is warning customers of active and ongoing attacks targetted at a range of the company’s firewalls and other types of security devices.

Summit zyxel firmware