The Unbearable Lightness of BMC's

Welcome to a data center! A place where the air conditioner never stops and the long line of tiny, red and blue LEDs dance chaotically over the sounds of the never-ending fans, playing in unison.One thing is certain, everyone avoids data centers like the plague. And, like one of the greatest leaders of our time once said: "Behind every need, there is a right" (or in this case, a product).Welcome to the world of Out of Band Power Management devices, where vendors decide to put an extra microprocessor inside the motherboard to allow you to remotely monitor heat, fans, and power.We decided to take a look at these devices and what we found was even worse than what we could have imagined. Vulnerabilities that bring back memories from the 1990s, remote code execution that is 100% reliable and the possibility of moving bidirectionally between the server and the BMC, making not only an amazing lateral movement angle, but the perfect backdoor too.