This was a weekend of record-breaking DDoS attacks. Over the weekend, Cloudflare detected and mitigated dozens of hyper-volumetric DDoS attacks. The majority of attacks peaked in the ballpark of 50-70 million requests per second (rps) with the largest exceeding 71 million rps. This is the largest reported HTTP DDoS attack on record, more than 35% higher than the previous reported record of 46M rps in June 2022.
The attacks were HTTP/2-based and targeted websites protected by Cloudflare. They originated from over 30,000 IP addresses. Some of the attacked websites included a popular gaming provider, cryptocurrency companies, hosting providers, and cloud computing platforms. The attacks originated from numerous cloud providers, and we have been working with them to crack down on the botnet.
Record breaking attack: DDoS attack exceeding 71 million requests per second
Over the past year, we’ve seen more attacks originate from cloud computing providers. For this reason, we will be providing service providers that own their own autonomous system a free Botnet threat feed. The feed will provide service providers threat intelligence about their own IP space; attacks originating from within their autonomous system. Service providers that operate their own IP space can now sign up to the early access waiting list.
Is this related to the Super Bowl or Killnet?
No. This campaign of attacks arrives less than two weeks after the Killnet DDoS campaign that targeted healthcare websites. Based on the methods and targets, we do not believe that these recent attacks are related to the healthcare campaign. Furthermore, yesterday was the US Super Bowl, and we also do not believe that this attack campaign is related to the game event.
What are DDoS attacks?
Distributed Denial of Service attacks are cyber attacks that aim to take down Internet properties and make them unavailable for users. These types of cyberattacks can be very efficient against unprotected websites and they can be very inexpensive for the attackers to execute.
An HTTP DDoS attack usually involves a flood of HTTP requests towards the target website. The attacker’s objective is to bombard the website with more requests than it can handle. Given a sufficiently high amount of requests, the website’s server will not be able to process all of the attack requests along with the legitimate user requests. Users will experience this as website-load delays, timeouts, and eventually not being able to connect to their desired websites at all.
Illustration of a DDoS attack
To make attacks larger and more complicated, attackers usually leverage a network of bots — a botnet. The attacker will orchestrate the botnet to bombard the victim’s websites with HTTP requests. A sufficiently large and powerful botnet can generate very large attacks as we’ve seen in this case.
However, building and operating botnets requires a lot of investment and expertise. What is the average Joe to do? Well, an average Joe that wants to launch a DDoS attack against a website doesn’t need to start from scratch. They can hire one of numerous DDoS-as-a-Service platforms for as little as $30 per month. The more you pay, the larger and longer of an attack you’re going to get.
Why DDoS attacks?
Over the years, it has become easier, cheaper, and more accessible for attackers and attackers-for-hire to launch DDoS attacks. But as easy as it has become for the attackers, we want to make sure that it is even easier – and free – for defenders of organizations of all sizes to protect themselves against DDoS attacks of all types.
Unlike Ransomware attacks, Ransom DDoS attacks don’t require an actual system intrusion or a foothold within the targeted network. Usually Ransomware attacks start once an employee naively clicks an email link that installs and propagates the malware. There’s no need for that with DDoS attacks. They are more like a hit-and-run attack. All a DDoS attacker needs to know is the website’s address and/or IP address.
Is there an increase in DDoS attacks?
Yes. The size, sophistication, and frequency of attacks has been increasing over the past months. In our latest DDoS threat report, we saw that the amount of HTTP DDoS attacks increased by 79% year-over-year. Furthermore, the amount of volumetric attacks exceeding 100 Gbps grew by 67% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ), and the number of attacks lasting more than three hours increased by 87% QoQ.
But it doesn’t end there. The audacity of attackers has been increasing as well. In our latest DDoS threat report, we saw that Ransom DDoS attacks steadily increased throughout the year. They peaked in November 2022 where one out of every four surveyed customers reported being subject to Ransom DDoS attacks or threats.
Distribution of Ransom DDoS attacks by month
Should I be worried about DDoS attacks?
Yes. If your website, server, or networks are not protected against volumetric DDoS attacks using a cloud service that provides automatic detection and mitigation, we really recommend that you consider it.
Cloudflare customers shouldn’t be worried, but should be aware and prepared. Below is a list of recommended steps to ensure your security posture is optimized.
What steps should I take to defend against DDoS attacks?
Cloudflare’s systems have been automatically detecting and mitigating these DDoS attacks.
Cloudflare offers many features and capabilities that you may already have access to but may not be using. So as extra precaution, we recommend taking advantage of these capabilities to improve and optimize your security posture:
Ensure all DDoS Managed Rules are set to default settings (High sensitivity level and mitigation actions) for optimal DDoS activation.
Cloudflare Enterprise customers that are subscribed to the Advanced DDoS Protection service should consider enabling Adaptive DDoS Protection, which mitigates attacks more intelligently based on your unique traffic patterns.
Deploy firewall rules and rate limiting rules to enforce a combined positive and negative security model. Reduce the traffic allowed to your website based on your known usage.
Ensure your origin is not exposed to the public Internet (i.e., only enable access to Cloudflare IP addresses). As an extra security precaution, we recommend contacting your hosting provider and requesting new origin server IPs if they have been targeted directly in the past.
Customers with access to Managed IP Lists should consider leveraging those lists in firewall rules. Customers with Bot Management should consider leveraging the threat scores within the firewall rules.
Enable caching as much as possible to reduce the strain on your origin servers, and when using Workers, avoid overwhelming your origin server with more subrequests than necessary.
Defending against DDoS attacks is critical for organizations of all sizes. While attacks may be initiated by humans, they are executed by bots — and to play to win, you must fight bots with bots. Detection and mitigation must be automated as much as possible, because relying solely on humans to mitigate in real time puts defenders at a disadvantage. Cloudflare’s automated systems constantly detect and mitigate DDoS attacks for our customers, so they don’t have to. This automated approach, combined with our wide breadth of security capabilities, lets customers tailor the protection to their needs.
We’ve been providing unmetered and unlimited DDoS protection for free to all of our customers since 2017, when we pioneered the concept. Cloudflare’s mission is to help build a better Internet. A better Internet is one that is more secure, faster, and reliable for everyone – even in the face of DDoS attacks.
Visit 1.1.1.1 from any device to get started with our free app that makes your Internet faster and safer.
To learn more about our mission to help build a better Internet, start here. If you’re looking for a new career direction, check out our open positions.
Here are three of the worst breaches, attacker tactics and techniques of 2022, and the security controls that can provide effective, enterprise security protection for them.
Ransomware as a service is a type of attack in which the ransomware software and infrastructure are leased out to the attackers. These ransomware services can be purchased on the dark web from other threat actors and ransomware gangs. Common purchasing plans include buying the entire tool, using the existing infrastructure while paying per infection, or letting other attackers perform the service while sharing revenue with them.
In this attack, the threat actor consists of one of the most prevalent ransomware groups, specializing in access via third parties, while the targeted company is a medium-sized retailer with dozens of sites in the United States.
The threat actors used ransomware as a service to breach the victim’s network. They were able to exploit third-party credentials to gain initial access, progress laterally, and ransom the company, all within mere minutes.
The swiftness of this attack was unusual. In most RaaS cases, attackers usually stay in the networks for weeks and months before demanding ransom. What is particularly interesting about this attack is that the company was ransomed in minutes, with no need for discovery or weeks of lateral movement.
A log investigation revealed that the attackers targeted servers that did not exist in this system. As it turns out, the victim was initially breached and ransomed 13 months before this second ransomware attack. Subsequently, the first attacker group monetized the first attack not only through the ransom they obtained, but also by selling the company’s network information to the second ransomware group.
In the 13 months between the two attacks, the victim changed its network and removed servers, but the new attackers were not aware of these architectural modifications. The scripts they developed were designed for the previous network map. This also explains how they were able to attack so quickly – they had plenty of information about the network. The main lesson here is that ransomware attacks can be repeated by different groups, especially if the victim pays well.
“RaaS attacks such as this one are a good example of how full visibility allows for early alerting. A global, converged, cloud-native SASE platform that supports all edges, like Cato Networks provides complete network visibility into network events that are invisible to other providers or may go under the radar as benign events. And, being able to fully contextualize the events allows for early detection and remediation.
#2: The Critical Infrastructure Attack on Radiation Alert Networks#
Attacks on critical infrastructure are becoming more common and more dangerous. Breaches of water supply plants, sewage systems and other such infrastructures could put millions of residents at risk of a human crisis. These infrastructures are also becoming more vulnerable, and attack surface management tools for OSINT like Shodan and Censys allow security teams to find such vulnerabilities with ease.
In 2021, two hackers were suspected of targeting radiation alert networks. Their attack relied on two insiders that worked for a third party. These insiders disabled the radiation alert systems, significantly debilitating their ability to monitor radiation attacks. The attackers were then able to delete critical software and disable radiation gauges (which is part of the infrastructure itself).
“Unfortunately, scanning for vulnerable systems in critical infrastructure is easier than ever. While many such organizations have multiple layers of security, they are still using point solutions to try and defend their infrastructure rather than one system that can look holistically at the full attack lifecycle. Breaches are never just a phishing problem, or a credentials problem, or a vulnerable system problem – they are always a combination of multiple compromises performed by the threat actor,” said Etay Maor, Sr. Director of Security Strategy at Cato Networks.
#3: The Three-Step Ransomware Attack That Started with Phishing#
The third attack is also a ransomware attack. This time, it consisted of three steps:
1. Infiltration – The attacker was able to gain access to the network through a phishing attack. The victim clicked on a link that generated a connection to an external site, which resulted in the download of the payload.
2. Network activity – In the second phase, the attacker progressed laterally in the network for two weeks. During this time, it collected admin passwords and used in-memory fileless malware. Then on New Year’s Eve, it performed the encryption. This date was chosen since it was (rightfully) assumed the security team would be off on vacation.
3. Exfiltration – Finally, the attackers uploaded the data out of the network.
In addition to these three main steps, additional sub-techniques were employed during the attack and the victim’s point security solutions were not able to block this attack.
“A multiple choke point approach, one that looks horizontally (so to speak) at the attack rather than as a set of vertical, disjointed issues, is the way to enhance detection, mitigation and prevention of such threats. Opposed to popular belief, the attacker needs to be right many times and the defenders only need to be right just once. The underlying technologies to implement a multiple choke point approach are full network visibility via a cloud-native backbone, and a single pass security stack that’s based on ZTNA.” said Etay Maor, Sr. Director of Security Strategy at Cato Networks.
It is common for security professionals to succumb to the “single point of failure fallacy”. However, cyber-attacks are sophisticated events that rarely involve just one tactic or technique which is the cause of the breach. Therefore, an all-encompassing outlook is required to successfully mitigate cyber-attacks. Security point solutions are a solution for single points of failure. These tools can identify risks, but they will not connect the dots, which could and has led to a breach.
According to ongoing security research conducted by Cato Networks Security Team, they have identified two additional vulnerabilities and exploit attempts that they recommend including in your upcoming security plans:
While Log4j made its debut as early as December of 2021, the noise its making hasn’t died down. Log4j is still being used by attackers to exploit systems, as not all organizations have been able to patch their Log4j vulnerabilities or detect Log4j attacks, in what is known as “virtual patching”. They recommend prioritizing Log4j mitigation.
Security solutions like firewalls and VPNs have become access points for attackers. Patching them has become increasingly difficult, especially in the era of architecture cloudification and remote work. It is recommended to pay close attention to these components as they are increasingly vulnerable.
How to Minimize Your Attack Surface and Gain Visibility into the Network#
To reduce the attack surface, security professionals need visibility into their networks. Visibility relies on three pillars:
Actionable information – that can be used to mitigate attacks
Reliable information – that minimizes the number of false positives
Timely information – to ensure mitigation happens before the attack has an impact
Once an organization has complete visibility to the activity on their network they can contextualize the data, decide whether the activity witnessed should be allowed, denied, monitored, restricted (or any other action) and then have the ability to enforce this decision. All these elements must be applied to every entity, be it a user, device, cloud app etc. All the time everywhere. That is what SASE is all about.
Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.
Security stakeholders have come to realize that the prominent role the browser has in the modern corporate environment requires a re-evaluation of how it is managed and protected. While not long-ago web-borne risks were still addressed by a patchwork of endpoint, network, and cloud solutions, it is now clear that the partial protection these solutions provided is no longer sufficient. Therefore, more and more security teams are now turning to the emerging category of purpose-built Browser Security Platform as the answer to the browser’s security challenges.
However, as this security solution category is still relatively new, there is not yet an established set of browser security best practices, nor common evaluation criteria. LayerX, the User-First Browser Security Platform, is addressing security teams’ need with the downable Browser Security Checklist, that guides its readers through the essentials of choosing the best solution and provides them with an actionable checklist to use during the evaluation process.
The Browser is The Most Important Work Interface and the Most Targeted Attack Surface #
The browser has become the core workspace in the modern enterprise. On top of being the gateway to sanctioned SaaS apps and other non-corporate web destinations, the browser is the intersection point between cloud\web environments and physical or virtual endpoints. This makes the browser both a target for multiple types of attacks, as well as a potential source of unintentional data leakage.
Some of these attacks have been around for more than a decade, exploitation of browser vulnerabilities or drive-by download of malicious files, for example. Others have gained recent momentum alongside the steep rise in SaaS adoption, like social engineering users with phishing webpages. Yet others leverage the evolution in web page technology to launch sophisticated and hard-to-detect modifications and abuse of browser features to capture and exfiltrate sensitive data.
Browser Security 101 – What is It That We Need to Protect?#
Browser security can be divided into two different groups: preventing unintended data exposure and protection against various types of malicious activity.
From the data protection aspect, such a platform enforces policies that ensure sensitive corporate data is not shared or downloaded in an insecure manner from sanctioned apps, nor uploaded from managed devices to non-corporate web destinations.
From the threat protection aspect, such a platform detects and prevents three types of attacks:
Attacks that target the browser itself, with the purpose of compromising the host device or the data that resides within the browser application itself, such as cookies, passwords, and others.
Attacks that utilize the browser via compromised credentials to access corporate data that resides in both sanctioned and unsanctioned SaaS applications.
Attacks that leverage the modern web page as an attack vector to target user’s passwords, via a wide range of phishing methods or through malicious modification of browser features.
What should you focus on when choosing the browser security solution for your environment? What are the practical implications of the differences between the various offerings? How should deployment methods, the solution’s architecture, or user privacy be weighed in the overall consideration? How should threats and risks be prioritized?
As we’ve said before – unlike with other security solutions, you can’t just ping one of your peers and ask what he or she is doing. Browser security is new, and the wisdom of the crowd is yet to be formed. In fact, there’s an excellent chance that your peers are now struggling with the very same questions you are.
The Definitive Browser Security Platform Checklist – What it is and How to Use It#
The checklist (download it here) breaks down the high-level ‘browser security’ headline to small and digestible chunks of the concrete needs that need to be solved. These are brought to the reader in five pillars – deployment, user experience, security functionalities and user privacy. For each pillar there is a short description of its browser context and a more detailed explanation of its capabilities.
The most significant pillar, in terms of scope, is of course, the security functionalities one, which is divided into five sub-sections. Since, in most cases, this pillar would be the initial driver to pursuing browser security platform in the first place it’s worth going over them in more detail:
The need for browser security platform typically arises from one of the following:
— Attack Surface Management: Proactive reduction of the browser’s exposure to various types of threats, eliminating adversaries’ ability to carry them out.
— Zero Trust Access: Hardening the authentication requirements to ensure that the username and password were indeed provided by the legitimate user and were not compromised.
— SaaS Monitoring and Protection: 360° visibility into all users’ activity and data usage within sanctioned and unsanctioned apps, as well as other non-corporate web destinations, while safeguarding corporate data from compromise or loss.
— Protection Against Malicious Web Pages: Real-time detection and prevention of all the malicious tactics adversaries embed in the modern web page, including credential phishing, downloading of malicious files and data theft.
— Secure 3rd Party Access and BYOD: Enablement of secure access to corporate web resources from unmanaged devices of both the internal workforce as well as external contractors and service providers.
This list enables anyone to easily identify the objective for their browser security platform search and find out the required capabilities for fulfilling it.
The Checklist – A Straightforward Evaluation Shortcut #
The most important and actionable part in the guide is the concluding checklist, which provides, for the first time, a concise summary of all the essential capabilities a browser security platform should provide. This checklist makes the evaluation process easier than ever. All you have to do now is test the solutions you’ve shortlisted against it and see which one scores the highest. Once you have all of them lined up, you can make an informed decision based on the needs of your environment, as you understand them.
Any organization that handles sensitive data must be diligent in its security efforts, which include regular pen testing. Even a small data breach can result in significant damage to an organization’s reputation and bottom line.
There are two main reasons why regular pen testing is necessary for secure web application development:
Security: Web applications are constantly evolving, and new vulnerabilities are being discovered all the time. Pen testing helps identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers and allows you to fix them before they can do any damage.
Compliance: Depending on your industry and the type of data you handle, you may be required to comply with certain security standards (e.g., PCI DSS, NIST, HIPAA). Regular pen testing can help you verify that your web applications meet these standards and avoid penalties for non-compliance.
Many organizations, big and small, have once a year pen testing cycle. But what’s the best frequency for pen testing? Is once a year enough, or do you need to be more frequent?
The answer depends on several factors, including the type of development cycle you have, the criticality of your web applications, and the industry you’re in.
Agile development cycles are characterized by short release cycles and rapid iterations. This can make it difficult to keep track of changes made to the codebase and makes it more likely that security vulnerabilities will be introduced.
If you’re only testing once a year, there’s a good chance that vulnerabilities will go undetected for long periods of time. This could leave your organization open to attack.
To mitigate this risk, pen testing cycles should align with the organization’s development cycle. For static web applications, testing every 4-6 months should be sufficient. But for web applications that are updated frequently, you may need to test more often, such as monthly or even weekly.
Any system that is essential to your organization’s operations should be given extra attention when it comes to security. This is because a breach of these systems could have a devastating impact on your business. If your organization relies heavily on its web applications to do business, any downtime could result in significant financial losses.
For example, imagine that your organization’s e-commerce site went down for an hour due to a DDoS attack. Not only would you lose out on potential sales, but you would also have to deal with the cost of the attack and the negative publicity.
To avoid this scenario, it’s important to ensure that your web applications are always available and secure.
Non-critical web applications can usually get away with being tested once a year, but business-critical web applications should be tested more frequently to ensure they are not at risk of a major outage or data loss.
If all your web applications are internal, you may be able to get away with pen testing less frequently. However, if your web applications are accessible to the public, you must be extra diligent in your security efforts.
Web applications accessible to external traffic are more likely to be targeted by attackers. This is because there is a greater pool of attack vectors and more potential entry points for an attacker to exploit.
Customer-facing web applications also tend to have more users, which means that any security vulnerabilities will be exploited more quickly. For example, a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in an external web application with millions of users could be exploited within hours of being discovered.
To protect against these threats, it’s important to pen test customer-facing web applications more frequently than internal ones. Depending on the size and complexity of the application, you may need to pen test every month or even every week.
Certain industries are more likely to be targeted by hackers due to the sensitive nature of their data. Healthcare organizations, for example, are often targeted because of the protected health information (PHI) they hold.
If your organization is in a high-risk industry, you should consider conducting pen testing more frequently to ensure that your systems are secure and meet regulatory compliance. This will help protect your data and reduce the chances of a costly security incident.
You Don’t Have Internal Security Operations or a Pen testing Team#
This might sound counterintuitive, but if you don’t have an internal security team, you may need to conduct pen testing more frequently.
Organizations that don’t have dedicated security staff are more likely to be vulnerable to attacks.
Without an internal security team, you will need to rely on external pen testers to assess your organization’s security posture.
Depending on the size and complexity of your organization, you may need to pen test every month or even every week.
During a merger or acquisition, there is often a lot of confusion and chaos. This can make it difficult to keep track of all the systems and data that need to be secured. As a result, it’s important to conduct pen testing more frequently during these times to ensure that all systems are secure.
M&A also means that you are adding new web applications to your organization’s infrastructure. These new applications may have unknown security vulnerabilities that could put your entire organization at risk.
In 2016, Marriott acquired Starwood without being aware that hackers had exploited a flaw in Starwood’s reservation system two years earlier. Over 500 million customer records were compromised. This placed Marriott in hot water with the British watchdog ICO, resulting in 18.4 million pounds in fines in the UK. According to Bloomberg, there is more trouble ahead, as the hotel giant could “face up to $1 billion in regulatory fines and litigation costs.”
To protect against these threats, it’s important to conduct pen testing before and after an acquisition. This will help you identify potential security issues so they can be fixed before the transition is complete.
While periodic pen testing is important, it is no longer enough in today’s world. As businesses rely more on their web applications, continuous pen testing becomes increasingly important.
There are two main types of pen testing: time-boxed and continuous.
Traditional pen testing is done on a set schedule, such as once a year. This type of pen testing is no longer enough in today’s world, as businesses rely more on their web applications.
Continuous pen testing is the process of continuously scanning your systems for vulnerabilities. This allows you to identify and fix vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by attackers. Continuous pen testing allows you to find and fix security issues as they happen instead of waiting for a periodic assessment.
Continuous pen testing is especially important for organizations that have an agile development cycle. Since new code is deployed frequently, there is a greater chance for security vulnerabilities to be introduced.
Pen testing as a service models is where continuous pen testing shine. Outpost24’s PTaaS (Penetration-Testing-as-a-Service) platform enables businesses to conduct continuous pen testing with ease. The Outpost24 platform is always up-to-date with an organization’s latest security threats and vulnerabilities, so you can be confident that your web applications are secure.
Manual and automated pen testing: Outpost24’s PTaaS platform combines manual and automated pen testing to give you the best of both worlds. This means you can find and fix vulnerabilities faster while still getting the benefits of expert analysis.
Provides comprehensive coverage: Outpost24’s platform covers all OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities and more. This means that you can be confident that your web applications are secure against the latest threats.
Is cost-effective: With Outpost24, you only pay for the services you need. This makes it more affordable to conduct continuous pen testing, even for small businesses.
Regular pen testing is essential for secure web application development. Depending on your organization’s size, industry, and development cycle, you may need to revise your pen testing schedule.
Once-a-year pen testing cycle may be enough for some organizations, but for most, it is not. For business-critical, customer-facing, or high-traffic web applications, you should consider continuous pen testing.
Outpost24’s PTaaS platform makes it easy and cost-effective to conduct continuous pen testing. Contact us today to learn more about our platform and how we can help you secure your web applications.
Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.
The latest version of SonicOS firmware provides support for a wide variety of USB and Hotspot devices and wireless service providers as listed below.
Resolution
Broadband Devices
USA & Canada
Gen7
5G/4G/LTE
SonicOS 7.0
CARD REGION
OPERATOR
NAME
GENERATION
TYPE
SONICOS VERSION
SONICWAVE
USA
AT&T
Nighthawk 5G Mobile Hotspot Pro MR 5100
5G
Hotspot
7.0.1
No
USA
AT&T
NightHawk LTE MR1100
4G/LTE
Hotspot
7.0.0
No
USA
AT&T
Global Modem USB800
4G/LTE
USB
7.0.1
Yes
USA
AT&T
iPhone 11 Pro
4G/LTE
Hotspot
7.0.0
No
USA
AT&T
iPhone 12 Pro
4G/LTE
Hotspot
7.0.1
No
USA
Verizon
M2100
5G
Hotspot
7.0.1
Yes
USA
Verizon
M1000
5G
Hotspot
7.0.0
Yes
USA
Verizon
Orbic Speed
4G/LTE
Hotspot
7.0.0
No
USA
Verizon
MiFi Global U620L
4G/LTE
USB
7.0.0
Yes
USA
Sprint
Netstick
4G/LTE
USB
7.0.0
No
USA
Sprint
Franklin U772
4G/LTE
USB
7.0.0
No
USA
T-Mobile
M2000
4G/LTE
Hotspot
7.0.1
No
USA
T-Mobile
Link Zone2
4G/LTE
Hotspot
7.0.0
Yes
Gen6/Gen6.5
4G/LTE
SonicOS 6.x
CARD REGION
OPERATOR
NAME
GENERATION
TYPE
SONICOS VERSION
SONICWAVE
USA
AT&T
Global Modem USB800
4G/LTE
USB
6.5.4.5
Yes
USA
AT&T
Velocity (ZTE MF861)
4G/LTE
USB
6.5.3.1
Yes
USA
AT&T
Beam (Netgear AC340U)²
4G/LTE
USB
5.9.0.1
Yes
USA
AT&T
Momentum (Sierra Wireless 313U)
4G/LTE
USB
5.9.0.0
Yes
USA
Verizon
MiFi Global U620L
4G/LTE
USB
6.5.0.0
Yes
USA
Verizon
Novatel 551L
4G/LTE
USB
6.2.4.2
Yes
USA
Verizon
Pantech UML290
4G/LTE
USB
5.9.0.0
No
USA
Sprint
Franklin U772
4G/LTE
USB
6.5.3.1
No
USA
Sprint
Netgear 341U
4G/LTE
USB
6.2.2.0
Yes
Canada
Rogers
AirCard (Sierra Wireless 330U)
4G/LTE
USB
5.9.0.0
No
Gen5
3G
SonicOS 5.x
USA
AT&T
Velocity (Option GI0461)
3G
USB
5.8.1.1
No
USA
AT&T
Mercury (Sierra Wireless C885)
3G
USB
5.3.0.1
No
USA
Verizon
Pantech UMW190
3G
USB
5.9.0.0
No
USA
Verizon
Novatel USB760
3G
USB
5.3.0.1
No
USA
Verizon
Novatel 727
3G
USB
5.3.0.1
No
USA
Sprint
Novatel U760
3G
USB
5.3.0.1
No
USA
Sprint
Novatel 727U
3G
USB
5.3.0.1
No
USA
Sprint
Sierra Wireless 598U
3G
USB
5.8.1.1
No
USA
T-Mobile
Rocket 3.0 (ZTE MF683)
3G
USB
5.9.0.0
Yes
Canada
Bell
Novatel 760
3G
USB
5.3.1.0
No
International
Gen7
5G/4G/LTE
SonicOS 7.0
CARD REGION
Manufacturer
NAME
GENERATION
TYPE
SONICOS VERSION
SONICWAVE
Worldwide
Huawei
E6878-870
5G
Hotspot
7.0.0
No
Worldwide
Huawei
E8372H**
4G/LTE
USB
7.0.0
No
Worldwide
Huawei
E8201
4G/LTE
USB
7.0.0
No
Worldwide
Huawei
E3372
4G/LTE
USB
7.0.0
No
Worldwide
ZTE
MF833U
4G/LTE
USB
7.0.0
Yes
Worldwide
ZTE
MF825C
4G/LTE
USB
7.0.0
Yes
Worldwide
ZTE
MF79S
4G/LTE
USB
7.0.0
Yes
Gen6/Gen6.5
4G/LTE
SonicOS 6.x
CARD REGION
Manufacturer
NAME
GENERATION
TYPE
SONICOS VERSION
SONICWAVE
Worldwide
Huawei
E8372 (Telstra 4GX)
4G/LTE
USB
6.5.3.1
Yes
Worldwide
Huawei
E3372
4G/LTE
USB
6.5.3.1
Yes
Worldwide
Huawei
E3372h (-608 variant) 6
4G/LTE
USB
6.5.3.1
Yes
Worldwide
Huawei
E3372s (-608 variant) 6
4G/LTE
USB
6.5.3.1
Yes
Worldwide
Huawei
E398 (Kyocera 5005)
4G/LTE
USB
5.9.0.2
Yes
Worldwide
Huawei
E3276s
4G/LTE
USB
No
Yes
Worldwide
D-Link
DWM-221
4G/LTE
USB
6.5.3.1
Yes
Worldwide
D-Link
DWM-222 A1
4G/LTE
USB
6.5.3.1
Yes
Worldwide
ZTE
MF825
4G/LTE
USB
6.5.3.1
Yes
Worldwide
ZTE
MF832G
4G/LTE
USB
No
Yes
Worldwide
ZTE
MF79S
4G/LTE
USB
No
Yes
Gen5
3G
SonicOS 5.x
Worldwide
Huawei
E353 7
3G
USB
5.9.0.2
Yes
Worldwide
Huawei
K4605
3G
USB
5.9.0.2
Yes
Worldwide
Huawei
EC169C
3G
USB
5.9.0.7
No
Worldwide
Huawei
E180
3G
USB
5.9.0.1
No
Worldwide
Huawei
E182
3G
USB
5.9.0.0
No
Worldwide
Huawei
K3715
3G
USB
5.9.0.0
No
Worldwide
Huawei
E1750
3G
USB
5.8.0.2
No
Worldwide
Huawei
E176G
3G
USB
5.3.0.1
No
Worldwide
Huawei
E220
3G
USB
5.3.0.1
No
Worldwide
Huawei
EC122
3G
USB
5.9.0.0
No
LTE Cellular Extender
SonicOS 6.x
Worldwide
Accelerated
6300-CX LTE router
4G/LTE
SIM
6.5.0.0
No
¹ Cellular network operators around the world are announcing their plans to discontinue 3G services starting as early as December 2020. Therefore LTE or 5G WWAN devices should be used for new deployments. Existing deployments with 3G should be upgraded soon to LTE or 5G in preparation for the imminent discontinuation of 3G services. ² Refer to AT&T 340U article for more info ³ Multiple variations of the Huawei card: E8371h-153, E8372h-155, & E8372h-510 ⁴ Huawei Modem 3372h and 3372s have been released by Huawei in multiple variants (i.e. -608, -153, -607, -517, -511) and with different protocols. At the moment, SonicOS does not support Huawei Proprietary protocol so all the variants using a non-standard or proprietary protocol are not supported or require the ISP to provide a PPP APN Type. ⁵ Huawei Modem E353 is not compatible with SOHO 250. Also note that it is not an LTE card 6 For customers outside of the 90-day warranty support period, an active SonicWall 8×5 or 24×7 Dynamic Support agreement allows you to keep your network security up-to-date by providing access to the latest firmware updates. You can manage all services including Dynamic Support and firmware downloads on any of your registered appliances at mysonicwall.com.
Migration is the act of moving your UniFi devices from one host device to another. This is useful when:
You are replacing your UniFi OS Console with a new one of the same model.
You are upgrading your UniFi OS Console to a different model (e.g., a UDM to a UDM Pro).
You are offloading devices to a dedicated UniFi OS Console (e.g., moving cameras from a Cloud Key or UDM to a UNVR).
You are moving from a self-hosted Network application to a UniFi OS Console.
Note: This is not meant to be used as a staging file for setting up multiple applications on different hosts.
Types of Backups
UniFi OS Backups
UniFi OS backup files contain your entire system configuration, including your UniFi OS Console, user, application, and device settings. Assuming Remote Access is enabled, UniFi OS Cloud backups are created weekly by default. You can also generate additional Cloud backups or download localized backups at any time.
UniFi OS backups are useful when:
Restoring a prior system configuration after making network changes.
Migrating all applications to a new UniFi OS Console that is the same model as the original.
Note: Backups donot include data stored on an HDD, such as recorded Protect camera footage.
Application Backups
Each UniFi application allows you to back up and export its configuration. Application backups contain settings and device configurations specific to the respective application.
Application backups are useful when:
You want to restore a prior application configuration without affecting your other applications.
You want to migrate a self-hosted Network application to a UniFi OS Console.
You want to migrate your devices between two different UniFi OS Console models.
You need to back up a self-hosted Network application.
Note: Backups donot include data stored on an HDD, such as recorded Protect camera footage.
UniFi OS Console Migration
UniFi OS backups also allow you to restore your system configuration should you ever need to replace your console with one ofthesame model.
To do so:
First, ensure that you have already generated a Cloud backup, or downloaded a local backup. If not, please do so in your UniFi OS Settings.
Replace your old UniFi OS Console with the new one. All other network connections should remain unchanged.
Restore your system configuration on the new UniFi OS Console using the backup file. This can be done either during the initial setup or afterwards in your UniFi OS settings.
Note: Currently, UniFi OS backups cannot be used to perform cross-console migrations, but this capability will be added in a future update.
If you are migrating between two different console models, you will need to restore each application’s configuration with their respective backups. Please note, though, that these file(s) will not include UniFi OS users or settings.
See below for more information on using the configuration backups during migrations.
Migrating UniFi Network
Before migrating, we recommend reviewing your Device Authentication Credentials found in your Network application’s System Settings. These can be used to recover adopted device(s) if the migration is unsuccessful.
Standard Migration
This is used when all devices are on the same Layer 2 network (i.e., all devices are on the same network/VLAN as the management application’s host device).
Note: If you are a home user managing devices in a single location and have not used the set-inform command or other advanced Layer 3 adoption methods, this is most likely the method for you.
Download the desired backup file (*.unf) from your original Network application’s System Settings.
Ensure that your new Network application is up to date. Backups cannot be used to restore older application versions.
Replace your old UniFi OS Console with the new one. All other network connections should remain unchanged.
Restore the backup file in the Network application’s System Settings.
Ensure that all devices appear as online in the new application. If they do not, you can try Layer 3 adoption, or factory-reset and readopt your device(s) to the new Network application.
If a device continues to appear as Managed by Other, click on it to open its properties panel, then use its Device Authentication Credentials (from the original Network application’s host device) to perform an Advanced Adoption.
Migrating Applications That Manage Layer 3 Devices
This method is for users that have performed Layer 3 device adoption (i.e., devices are on a different network/VLAN than the application’s host device). This may also be useful when migrating to a Network application host that is NOT also a gateway.
Download the desired backup file (*.unf) from your original Network application’s System Settings.
Enable the Override Inform Host field on the original Network application’s host device, then enter the IP address of the new host device. This will tell your devices where they should establish a connection in order to be managed. Once entered, all devices in the old application should appear as Managed by Other.
Note: When migrating to a Cloud Console, you can copy the Inform URL from the Cloud Console’s dashboard. Be aware that you will need to remove the initial http:// and the ending :8080/inform.
Ensure that your new Network application is up to date. Backups cannot be used to restore older application versions.
Restore the backup file in the Network application’s System Settings.
Ensure that all devices appear as online in the new application. If they do not, you can try Layer 3 adoption, or factory-reset and readopt your device(s) to the new application.
If a device continues to appear as Managed by Other, click on it to open its properties panel, then use its Device Authentication Credentials (from the original Network application’s host) to perform an Advanced Adoption.
Exporting Individual Sites from a Multi-Site Host
Certain Network application hosts (e.g., Cloud Key, Cloud Console, self-hosted Network applications) can manage multiple sites. Site exportation allows you to migrate specific sites from one multi-site host to another. To do so:
Click Export Site in your Network application’s System Settings to begin the guided walkthrough.
Select the device(s) you wish to migrate to your new Network application.
Enter the Inform URL of your new host. This will tell your devices where they should establish a connection in order to be managed. Once entered, all devices in the old application should appear as Managed by Other in the new one.
Note: When migrating to a Cloud Console, you can copy the Inform URL from the Cloud Console’s dashboard. Be aware that you will need to remove the initial http:// and the ending :8080/inform.
Go to your new Network application and select Import Site from the Site switcher located in the upper-left corner of your dashboard.
Note: You may need to enable Multi-Site Management in your System Settings.
Ensure that all devices appear as online in the new application. If they do not, you try Layer 3 adoption, or factory-reset and readopt your device(s) to the new application.
If a device continues to appear as Managed by Other, click on it to open its properties panel, then use its Device Authentication Credentials (from the original Network application’s host) to perform an Advanced Adoption.
Migrating UniFi Protect
We recommend saving your footage with the Export Clips function before migrating. Although we provide HDD migration instructions, it is not an officially supported procedure due to nuances in the RAID array architecture.
Standard Migration
Download the desired backup file (*.zip) from the original Protect application’s settings.
Ensure that your new Protect application is up to date. Backups cannot be used to restore older application firmware.
Replace your old UniFi OS Console with the new one. All other camera connections should remain unchanged.
Restore the backup file in the Protect application’s settings.
HDD Migration
Full HDD migration is not officially supported; however, some users have been able to perform successful migrations by ensuring consistent ordering when ejecting and reinstalling drives into their new console to preserve RAID arrays.
Note: This is only possible if both UniFi OS Consoles are the same model.
Remove the HDDs from the old console. Record which bay each one was installed in, but do not install them in the new console yet.
Turn on the new console and complete the initial setup wizard. Do not restore a Protect application or Cloud backup during initial setup!
Upgrade the new console and its Protect application to a version that is either the same or newer than the original console.
Shut down the new console, and then install the HDDs in the same bays as the original console.
Turn on the new console again. The Protect application should start with its current configuration intact, and all exported footage should be accessible.
We recommend installing the G4 Doorbell with the standard wiring of one G4 Doorbell, one chime and one transformer (or the G4 Doorbell Power Supply, available on the US store only); or no chime with the chime function disabled.
More complex installations are supported, but correct wiring may depend on deployment-specific characteristics not covered in these diagrams. Any advanced configurations should be conducted by a qualified electrician.
Before you begin the wiring process, separate the G4 Doorbell wires into left and right as shown in the images below.
During the fall of 2022, a few friends and I took a road trip from Chicago, IL to Washington, DC to attend a cybersecurity conference and (try) to take a break from our usual computer work.
While we were visiting the University of Maryland, we came across a fleet of electric scooters scattered across the campus and couldn’t resist poking at the scooter’s mobile app. To our surprise, our actions caused the horns and headlights on all of the scooters to turn on and stay on for 15 minutes straight.
When everything eventually settled down, we sent a report over to the scooter manufacturer and became super interested in trying to more ways to make more things honk. We brainstormed for a while, and then realized that nearly every automobile manufactured in the last 5 years had nearly identical functionality. If an attacker were able to find vulnerabilities in the API endpoints that vehicle telematics systems used, they could honk the horn, flash the lights, remotely track, lock/unlock, and start/stop vehicles, completely remotely.
At this point, we started a group chat and all began to work with the goal of finding vulnerabilities affecting the automotive industry. Over the next few months, we found as many car-related vulnerabilities as we could. The following writeup details our work exploring the security of telematic systems, automotive APIs, and the infrastructure that supports it.
Findings Summary
During our engagement, we found the following vulnerabilities in the companies listed below:
Kia, Honda, Infiniti, Nissan, Acura
Fully remote lock, unlock, engine start, engine stop, precision locate, flash headlights, and honk vehicles using only the VIN number
Fully remote account takeover and PII disclosure via VIN number (name, phone number, email address, physical address)
Ability to lock users out of remotely managing their vehicle, change ownership
For Kia’s specifically, we could remotely access the 360-view camera and view live images from the car
Mercedes-Benz
Access to hundreds of mission-critical internal applications via improperly configured SSO, including…
Multiple Github instances behind SSO
Company-wide internal chat tool, ability to join nearly any channel
SonarQube, Jenkins, misc. build servers
Internal cloud deployment services for managing AWS instances
Internal Vehicle related APIs
Remote Code Execution on multiple systems
Memory leaks leading to employee/customer PII disclosure, account access
Hyundai, Genesis
Fully remote lock, unlock, engine start, engine stop, precision locate, flash headlights, and honk vehicles using only the victim email address
Fully remote account takeover and PII disclosure via victim email address (name, phone number, email address, physical address)
Ability to lock users out of remotely managing their vehicle, change ownership
BMW, Rolls Royce
Company-wide core SSO vulnerabilities which allowed us to access any employee application as any employee, allowed us to…
Access to internal dealer portals where you can query any VIN number to retrieve sales documents for BMW
Access any application locked behind SSO on behalf of any employee, including applications used by remote workers and dealerships
Ferrari
Full zero-interaction account takeover for any Ferrari customer account
IDOR to access all Ferrari customer records
Lack of access control allowing an attacker to create, modify, delete employee “back office” administrator user accounts and all user accounts with capabilities to modify Ferrari owned web pages through the CMS system
Ability to add HTTP routes on api.ferrari.com (rest-connectors) and view all existing rest-connectors and secrets associated with them (authorization headers)
Spireon
Multiple vulnerabilities, including:
Full administrator access to a company-wide administration panel with ability to send arbitrary commands to an estimated 15.5 million vehicles (unlock, start engine, disable starter, etc.), read any device location, and flash/update device firmware
Remote code execution on core systems for managing user accounts, devices, and fleets. Ability to access and manage all data across all of Spireon
Ability to fully takeover any fleet (this would’ve allowed us to track & shut off starters for police, ambulances, and law enforcement vehicles for a number of different large cities and dispatch commands to those vehicles, e.g. “navigate to this location”)
Full administrative access to all Spireon products, including the following…
1.2 million user accounts (end user accounts, fleet managers, etc.)
Ford
Full memory disclosure on production vehicle Telematics API discloses
Discloses customer PII and access tokens for tracking and executing commands on vehicles
Discloses configuration credentials used for internal services related to Telematics
Ability to authenticate into customer account and access all PII and perform actions against vehicles
Customer account takeover via improper URL parsing, allows an attacker to completely access victim account including vehicle portal
Reviver
Full super administrative access to manage all user accounts and vehicles for all Reviver connected vehicles. An attacker could perform the following:
Track the physical GPS location and manage the license plate for all Reviver customers (e.g. changing the slogan at the bottom of the license plate to arbitrary text)
Update any vehicle status to “STOLEN” which updates the license plate and informs authorities
Access all user records, including what vehicles people owned, their physical address, phone number, and email address
Access the fleet management functionality for any company, locate and manage all vehicles in a fleet
Porsche
Ability to send retrieve vehicle location, send vehicle commands, and retrieve customer information via vulnerabilities affecting the vehicle Telematics service
Toyota
IDOR on Toyota Financial that discloses the name, phone number, email address, and loan status of any Toyota financial customers
Jaguar, Land Rover
User account IDOR disclosing password hash, name, phone number, physical address, and vehicle information
SiriusXM
Leaked AWS keys with full organizational read/write S3 access, ability to retrieve all files including (what appeared to be) user databases, source code, and config files for Sirius
Vulnerability Writeups
(1) Full Account Takeover on BMW and Rolls Royce via Misconfigured SSO
While testing BMW assets, we identified a custom SSO portal for employees and contractors of BMW. This was super interesting to us, as any vulnerabilities identified here could potentially allow an attacker to compromise any account connected to all of BMWs assets.
For instance, if a dealer wanted to access the dealer portal at a physical BMW dealership, they would have to authenticate through this portal. Additionally, this SSO portal was used to access internal tools and related devops infrastructure.
The first thing we did was fingerprint the host using OSINT tools like gau and ffuf. After a few hours of fuzzing, we identified a WADL file which exposed API endpoints on the host via sending the following HTTP request:
GET /rest/api/application.wadl HTTP/1.1
Host: xpita.bmwgroup.com
The HTTP response contained all available REST endpoints on the xpita host. We began enumerating the endpoints and sending mock HTTP requests to see what functionality was available.
One immediate finding was that we were able to query all BMW user accounts via sending asterisk queries in the user field API endpoint. This allowed us to enter something like “sam*” and retrieve the user information for a user named “sam.curry” without having to guess the actual username.
HTTP Request
GET /reset/api/users/example* HTTP/1.1
Host: xpita.bmwgroup.com
HTTP Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-type: application/json
{“id”:”redacted”,”firstName”:”Example”,”lastName”:”User”,”userName”:”example.user”}
Once we found this vulnerability, we continued testing the other accessible API endpoints. One particularly interesting one which stood out immediately was the “/rest/api/chains/accounts/:user_id/totp” endpoint. We noticed the word “totp” which usually stood for one-time password generation.
When we sent an HTTP request to this endpoint using the SSO user ID gained from the wildcard query paired with the TOTP endpoint, it returned a random 7-digit number. The following HTTP request and response demonstrate this behavior:
HTTP Request
GET /rest/api/chains/accounts/unique_account_id/totp HTTP/1.1
Host: xpita.bmwgroup.com
HTTP Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-type: text/plain
9373958
For whatever reason, it appeared that this HTTP request would generate a TOTP for the user’s account. We guessed that this interaction worked with the “forgot password” functionality, so we found an example user account by querying “example*” using our original wildcard finding and retrieving the victim user ID. After retrieving this ID, we initiated a reset password attempt for the user account until we got to the point where the system requested a TOTP code from the user’s 2FA device (e.g. email or phone).
At this point, we retrieved the TOTP code generated from the API endpoint and entered it into the reset password confirmation field.
It worked! We had reset a user account, gaining full account takeover on any BMW employee and contractor user.
At this point, it was possible to completely take over any BMW or Rolls Royce employee account and access tools used by those employees.
To demonstrate the impact of the vulnerability, we simply Googled “BMW dealer portal” and used our account to access the dealer portal used by sales associates working at physical BMW and Rolls Royce dealerships.
After logging in, we observed that the demo account we took over was tied to an actual dealership, and we could access all of the functionality that the dealers themselves had access to. This included the ability to query a specific VIN number and retrieve sales documents for the vehicle.
With our level of access, there was a huge amount of functionality we could’ve performed against BMW and Rolls Royce customer accounts and customer vehicles. We stopped testing at this point and reported the vulnerability.
The vulnerabilities reported to BMW and Rolls Royce have since been fixed.
(2) Remote Code Execution and Access to Hundreds of Internal Tools on Mercedes-Benz and Rolls Royce via Misconfigured SSO
Early in our testing, someone in our group had purchased a Mercedes-Benz vehicle and so we began auditing the Mercedes-Benz infrastructure. We took the same approach as BMW and began testing the Mercedes-Benz employee SSO.
We weren’t able to find any vulnerabilities affecting the SSO portal itself, but by exploring the SSO website we observed that they were running some form of LDAP for the employee accounts. Based on our high level understanding of their infrastructure, we guessed that the individual employee applications used a centralized LDAP system to authenticate users. We began exploring each of these websites in an attempt to find a public registration so we could gain SSO credentials to access, even at a limited level, the employee applications.
After fuzzing random sites for a while, we eventually found the “umas.mercedes-benz.com” website which was built for vehicle repair shops to request specific tools access from Mercedes-Benz. The website had public registration enabled as it was built for repair shops and appeared to write to the same database as the core employee LDAP system.
We filled out all the required fields for registration, created a user account, then used our recon data to identify sites which redirected to the Mercedes-Benz SSO. The first one we attempted was a pretty obvious employee tool, it was “git.mercedes-benz.com”, short for Github. We attempted to use our user credentials to sign in to the Mercedes-Benz Github and saw that we were able to login. Success!
The Mercedes-Benz Github, after authenticating, asked us to set up 2FA on our account so we could access the app. We installed the 2FA app and added it to our account, entered our code, then saw that we were in. We had access to “git.mercedes-benz.com” and began looking around.
After a few minutes, we saw that the Github instance had internal documentation and source code for various Mercedes-Benz projects including the Mercedes Me Connect app which was used by customers to remotely connect to their vehicles. The internal documentation gave detailed instructions for employees to follow if they wanted to build an application for Mercedes-Benz themselves to talk to customer vehicles and the specific steps one would have to take to talk to customer vehicles.
At this point, we reported the vulnerability, but got some pushback after a few days of waiting on an email response. The team seemed to misunderstand the impact, so they asked us to demonstrate further impact.
We used our employee account to login to numerous applications which contained sensitive information and achieved remote code execution via exposed actuators, spring boot consoles, and dozens of sensitive internal applications used by Mercedes-Benz employees. One of these applications was the Mercedes-Benz Mattermost (basically Slack). We had permission to join any channel, including security channels, and could pose as a Mercedes-Benz employee who could ask whatever questions necessary for an actual attacker to elevate their privileges across the Benz infrastructure.
To give an overview, we could access the following services:
Multiple employee-only Githubs with sensitive information containing documentation and configuration files for multiple applications across the Mercedes-Benz infrastructure
Spring boot actuators which lead to remote code execution, information disclosure, on sensitive employee and customer facing applications Jenkins instances
AWS and cloud-computing control panels where we could request, manage, and access various internal systems
XENTRY systems used to communicate with customer vehicles
Internal OAuth and application-management related functionality for configuring and managing internal apps
Hundreds of miscellaneous internal services
(3) Full Account Takeover on Ferrari and Arbitrary Account Creation allows Attacker to Access, Modify, and Delete All Customer Information and Access Administrative CMS Functionality to Manage Ferrari Websites
When we began targeting Ferrari, we mapped out all domains under the publicly available domains like “ferrari.com” and browsed around to see what was accessible. One target we found was “api.ferrari.com”, a domain which offered both customer facing and internal APIs for Ferrari systems. Our goal was to get the highest level of access possible for this API.
We analyzed the JavaScript present on several Ferrari subdomains that looked like they were for use by Ferrari dealers. These subdomains included `cms-dealer.ferrari.com`, `cms-new.ferrari.com` and `cms-dealer.test.ferrari.com`.
One of the patterns we notice when testing web applications is poorly implemented single sign on functionality which does not restrict access to the underlying application. This was the case for the above subdomains. It was possible to extract the JavaScript present for these applications, allowing us to understand the backend API routes in use.
When reverse engineering JavaScript bundles, it is important to check what constants have been defined for the application. Often these constants contain sensitive credentials or at the very least, tell you where the backend API is, that the application talks to.
For this application, we noticed the following constants were set:
From the above constants we can understand that the base API URL is `https://api.ferrari.com/cms/dws/back-office/` and a potential API key for this API is `REDACTED`.
Digging further into the JavaScript we can look for references to `apiUrl` which will inform us as to how this API is called and how the API key is being used. For example, the following JavaScript sets certain headers if the API URL is being called:
})).url.startsWith(x.a.apiUrl) && !["/back-office/dealers", "/back-office/dealer-settings", "/back-office/locales", "/back-office/currencies", "/back-office/dealer-groups"].some(t => !!e.url.match(t)) && (e = (e = e.clone({
headers: e.headers.set("Authorization", "" + (s || void 0))
})).clone({
headers: e.headers.set("x-api-key", "" + a)
}));
All the elements needed for this discovery were conveniently tucked away in this JavaScript file. We knew what backend API to talk to and its routes, as well as the API key we needed to authenticate to the API.
Within the JavaScript, we noticed an API call to `/cms/dws/back-office/auth/bo-users`. When requesting this API through Burp Suite, it leaked all of the users registered for the Ferrari Dealers application. Furthermore, it was possible to send a POST request to this endpoint to add ourselves as a super admin user.
While impactful, we were still looking for a vulnerability that affected the broader Ferrari ecosystem and every end user. Spending more time deconstructing the JavaScript, we found some API calls were being made to `rest-connectors`:
The following request unlocked the final piece in the puzzle. Sending the following request revealed a treasure trove of API credentials for Ferrari: :
GET /cms/dws/back-office/rest-connector-models HTTP/1.1
To explain what this endpoint’s purpose was: Ferrari had configured a number of backend APIs that could be communicated with by hitting specific paths. When hitting this API endpoint, it returned this list of API endpoints, hosts and authorization headers (in plain text).
This information disclosure allowed us to query Ferrari’s production API to access the personal information of any Ferrari customer. In addition to being able to view these API endpoints, we could also register new rest connectors or modify existing ones.
HTTP Request
GET /core/api/v1/Users?email=ian@ian.sh HTTP/1.1
Host: fcd.services.ferrari.com
HTTP Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-type: application/json
…"guid":"2d32922a-28c4-483e-8486-7c2222b7b59c","email":"ian@ian.sh","nickName":"ian@ian.sh","firstName":"Ian","lastName":"Carroll","birthdate":"1963-12-11T00:00:00"…
The API key and production endpoints that were disclosed using the previous staging API key allowed an attacker to access, create, modify, and delete any production user account. It additionally allowed an attacker to query users via email address or nickname.
Additionally, an attacker could POST to the “/core/api/v1/Users/:id/Roles” endpoint to edit their user roles, setting themselves to have super-user permissions or become a Ferrari owner.
This vulnerability would allow an attacker to access, modify, and delete any Ferrari customer account with access to manage their vehicle profile.
(4) SQL Injection and Regex Authorization Bypass on Spireon Systems allows Attacker to Access, Track, and Send Arbitrary Commands to 15 million Telematics systems and Additionally Fully Takeover Fleet Management Systems for Police Departments, Ambulance Services, Truckers, and Many Business Fleet Systems
When identifying car-related targets to hack on, we found the company Spireon. In the early 90s and 2000s, there were a few companies like OnStar, Goldstar, and FleetLocate which were standalone devices which were put into vehicles to track and manage them. The devices have the capabilities to be tracked and receive arbitrary commands, e.g. locking the starter so the vehicle cannot start.
Sometime in the past, Spireon had acquired many GPS Vehicle Tracking and Management Companies and put them under the Spireon parent company.
We read through the Spireon marketing and saw that they claimed to have over 15 million connected vehicles. They offered services directly to customers and additionally many services through their subsidiary companies like OnStar.
We decided to research them as, if an attacker were able to compromise the administration functionality for these devices and fleets, they would be able to perform actions against over 15 million vehicles with very interesting functionalities like sending a cities police officers a dispatch location, disabling vehicle starters, and accessing financial loan information for dealers.
Our first target for this was very obvious: admin.spireon.com
The website appeared to be a very out of date global administration portal for Spireon employees to authenticate and perform some sort of action. We attempted to identify interesting endpoints which were accessible without authorization, but kept getting redirected back to the login.
Since the website was so old, we tried the trusted manual SQL injection payloads but were kicked out by a WAF that was installed on the system
We switched to a much simpler payload: sending an apostrophe, seeing if we got an error, then sending two apostrophes and seeing if we did not get an error. This worked! The system appeared to be reacting to sending an odd versus even number of apostrophes. This indicated that our input in both the username and password field was being passed to a system which could likely be vulnerable to some sort of SQL injection attack.
For the username field, we came up with a very simple payload:
victim' #
The above payload was designed to simply cut off the password check from the SQL query. We sent this HTTP request to Burp Suite’s intruder with a common username list and observed that we received various 301 redirects to “/dashboard” for the username “administrator” and “admin”.
After manually sending the HTTP request using the admin username, we observed that we were authenticated into the Spireon administrator portal as an administrator user. At this point, we browsed around the application and saw many interesting endpoints.
The functionality was designed to manage Spireon devices remotely. The administrator user had access to all Spireon devices, including those of OnStar, GoldStar, and FleetLocate. We could query these devices and retrieve the live location of whatever the devices were installed on, and additionally send arbitrary commands to these devices. There was additional functionality to overwrite the device configuration including what servers it reached out to download updated firmware.
Using this portal, an attacker could create a malicious Spireon package, update the vehicle configuration to call out to the modified package, then download and install the modified Spireon software.
At this point, an attacker could backdoor the Spireon device and run arbitrary commands against the device.
Since these devices were very ubiquitous and were installed on things like tractors, golf carts, police cars, and ambulances, the impact of each device differed. For some, we could only access the live GPS location of the device, but for others we could disable the starter and send police and ambulance dispatch locations.
We reported the vulnerability immediately, but during testing, we observed an HTTP 500 error which disclosed the API URL of the backend API endpoint that the “admin.spireon.com” service reached out to. Initially, we dismissed this as we assumed it was internal, but after circling back we observed that we could hit the endpoint and it would trigger an HTTP 403 forbidden error.
Our goal now was seeing if we could find some sort of authorization bypass on the host and what endpoints were accessible. By bypassing the administrator UI, we could directly reach out to each device and have direct queries for vehicles and user accounts via the backend API calls.
We fuzzed the host and eventually observed some weird behavior:
By sending any string with “admin” or “dashboard”, the system would trigger an HTTP 403 forbidden response, but would return 404 if we didn’t include this string. As an example, if we attempted to load “/anything-admin-anything” we’d receive 403 forbidden, while if we attempted to load “/anything-anything” it would return a 404.
We took the blacklisted strings, put them in a list, then attempted to enumerate the specific endpoints with fuzzing characters (%00 to %FF) stuck behind the first and last characters.
During scanning, we saw that the following HTTP requests would return a 200 OK response:
GET /%0dadmin
GET /%0ddashboard
Through Burp Suite, we sent the HTTP response to our browser and observed the response: it was a full administrative portal for the core Spireon app. We quickly set up a match and replace rule to modify GET /admin and GET /dashboard to the endpoints with the %0d prefix.
After setting up this rule, we could browse to “/admin” or “/dashboard” and explore the website without having to perform any additional steps. We observed that there were dozens of endpoints which were used to query all connected vehicles, send arbitrary commands to connected vehicles, and view all customer tenant accounts, fleet accounts, and customer accounts. We had access to everything.
At this point, a malicious actor could backdoor the 15 million devices, query what ownership information was associated with a specific VIN, retrieve the full user information for all customer accounts, and invite themselves to manage any fleet which was connected to the app.
For our proof of concept, we invited ourselves to a random fleet account and saw that we received an invitation to administrate a US Police Department where we could track the entire police fleet.
(5) Mass Assignment on Reviver allows an Attacker to Remotely Track and Overwrite the Virtual License Plates for All Reviver Customers, Track and Administrate Reviver Fleets, and Access, Modify, and Delete All User Information
In October, 2022, California announced that it had legalized digital license plates. We researched this for a while and found that most, if not all of the digital license plates, were done through a company called Reviver.
If someone wanted a digital license plate, they’d buy the virtual Reviver license plate which included a SIM card for remotely tracking and updating the license plate. Customers who uses Reviver could remotely update their license plates slogan, background, and additionally report if the car had been stolen via setting the plate tag to “STOLEN”.
Since the license plate could be used to track vehicles, we were super interested in Reviver and began auditing the mobile app. We proxied the HTTP traffic and saw that all API functionality was done on the “pr-api.rplate.com” website. After creating a user account, our user account was assigned to a unique “company” JSON object which allowed us to add other sub-users to our account.
The company JSON object was super interesting as we could update many of the JSON fields within the object. One of these fields was called “type” and was default set to “CONSUMER”. After noticing this, we dug through the app source code in hopes that we could find another value to set it to, but were unsuccessful.
At this point, we took a step back and wondered if there was an actual website we could talk to versus proxying traffic through the mobile app. We looked online for a while before getting the idea to perform a reset password on our account which gave us a URL to navigate to.
Once we opened the password reset URL, we observed that the website had tons of functionality including the ability to administer vehicles, fleets, and user accounts. This was super interesting as we now had a lot more API endpoints and functionality to access. Additionally, the JavaScript on the website appeared to have the names of the other roles that our user account could be (e.g. specialized names for user, moderator, admin, etc.)
We queried the “CONSUMER” string in the JavaScript and saw that there were other roles that were defined in the JavaScript. After attempting to update our “role” parameter to the disclosed “CORPORATE” role, we refreshed out profile metadata, then saw that it was successful! We were able to change our roles to ones other than the default user account, opening the door to potential privilige escalation vulnerabilities.
It appeared that, even though we had updated our account to the “CORPORATE” role, we were still receiving authorization vulnerabilities when logging into the website. We thought for a while until realizing that we could invite users to our modified account which had the elevated role, which may then grant the invited users the required permissions since they were invited via an intended way versus mass assigning an account to an elevated role.
After inviting a new account, accepting the invitation, and logging into the account, we observed that we no longer received authorization errors and could access fleet management functionality. This meant that we could likely (1) mass assign our account to an even higher elevated role (e.g. admin), then (2) invite a user to our account which would be assigned the appropriate permissions.
This perplexed us as there was likely some administration group which existed in the system but that we had not yet identified. We brute forced the “type” parameter using wordlists until we noticed that setting our group to the number “4” had updated our role to “REVIVER_ROLE”. It appeared that the roles were indexed to numbers, and we could simply run through the numbers 0-100 and find all the roles on the website.
The “0” role was the string “REVIVER”, and after setting this on our account and re-inviting a new user, we logged into the website normally and observed that the UI was completely broken and we couldn’t click any buttons. From what we could guess, we had the administrator role but were accessing the account using the customer facing frontend website and not the appropriate administrator frontend website. We would have to find the endpoints used by administrators ourselves.
Since our administrator account theoretically had elevated permissions, our first test was simply querying a user account and seeing if we could access someone else’s data: this worked!
We could take any of the normal API calls (viewing vehicle location, updating vehicle plates, adding new users to accounts) and perform the action using our super administrator account with full authorization.
At this point, we reported the vulnerability and observed that it was patched in under 24 hours. An actual attacker could remotely update, track, or delete anyone’s REVIVER plate. We could additionally access any dealer (e.g. Mercedes-Benz dealerships will often package REVIVER plates) and update the default image used by the dealer when the newly purchased vehicle still had DEALER tags.
The Reviver website also offered fleet management functionality which we had full access to.
(6) Full Remote Vehicle Access and Full Account Takeover affecting Hyundai and Genesis
This vulnerability was written up on Twitter and can be accessed on the following thread:
The premise of this article’s headline is nonsense, sure, but it isn’t clickbait—I promise.
You’re almost certainly here because you searched for “best productivity apps.” I understand that impulse. You want to get more done in less time, which is about as universal a feeling as humans can have at work. The problem: productivity is deeply personal, and the words “productivity tools” mean a lot of different things to different people. What works for you may or may not work for me, which is why—after over a decade of writing about productivity software—I don’t really believe there are objectively “best” productivity apps.
I do, however, think there are categories of tools that can help you become a better version of yourself. Some of them work better for more people than others, and not everyone needs an app from every category. Knowing what kinds of apps exist, and what you should look for in an app, is more important than knowing what the “best” app in that category is.
Having said that, you’re here for software recommendations, not my personal reflections on the nature of productivity. So I’m going to go over the main kinds of productivity apps I think most humans who use electronic devices at work should know about. I’ll explain why I think each category is important, point to an app or two that I think will work well for most people, then offer links to other options if you want to learn more.
Just remember: the specific app doesn’t matter. The best productivity app is the one that works best for you. The most important thing is having a system. Sound good? Let’s jump in.
All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who’ve spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it’s intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We’re never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.
We all have things we need to do—at work and in the rest of our lives. The worst place you could store those things, in my opinion, is in your mind. It’s just stressful: you’ll remember, at random moments, that there’s something you were supposed to be doing, and that memory will result in panic. Writing down everything you need to do allows you to make a plan, and (crucially) means you don’t have to panic.
Not everyone benefits from a dedicated to-do list app—some of the most productive people I know prefer sticky notes, email inboxes, or even spreadsheets. I think that’s great, so long as you have some place to record the things you need to do.
I think that Todoist, shown above, is a great to-do list app for most people. It’s easy to use but also offers a lot of features. It can also be installed on basically any device you can imagine, meaning your to-do list is always available. It allows you to assign due dates to tasks, sort tasks by project, or even view a project using a Kanban board. You don’t have to worry about those features if you don’t want to, though, which is why I think it’s a great starting point for someone who needs a to-do list.
If Todoist doesn’t work for you, though, check out our list of the best to-do list apps—it’s got a wide variety of recommendations. I, personally, use TickTick because I like how easy it is to add tasks, and I also can’t stop saying good things about Things for sheer simplicity on Apple devices. Find a tool you like—and that you remember to actually open. There’s nothing less useful than an app full of tasks you never look at.
Once you’ve picked your to-do list app, make the most of it with automation, so you can easily add tasks that come in by email, team chat apps, project management tools, or notes. Read more about automating your to-do list.
There are only so many hours in the day, unfortunately, which means you have to budget them. A calendar is how you do that. You could use a paper wall calendar, sure, but a calendar app lets you invite other people to an event. Also, in a world where so many meetings are virtual, calendar apps give you a useful place to store the link to your Zoom call.
I think that Google Calendar, shown above, is the right calendar app for most people—particularly people who already use Gmail. Google Calendar is easy to load on any device, lets you see your calendar in several different views, and makes it easy to invite anyone else to any event or meeting you happen to plan. I could writemultiplearticlesonGoogle Calendar features (and I have). This app does everything any other app can do, and more, all while being pretty easy to use.
If Google Calendar doesn’t work for you, though, check out our list of the best calendar apps for more options. Microsoft Outlook is a solid alternative, as is the Calendar app that comes with all Apple devices.
I’d also consider looking into some kind of meeting scheduling app. These apps let anyone sign up for appointments with you, which is particularly useful if you have a meeting-heavy calendar. Calendly, shown below, is a solid option, with a lot of customizability and the ability to sync with Google Calendar. You can check out our list of the best meeting schedulers for a more complete rundown of Calendly and other options.
Once you choose a calendar app, take it to the next level. With automation, you can do things like automatically turn calendar events into tasks on your to-do list or use forms to create calendar events. Here’s how you can bring context to your calendar by connecting other apps.
I’m constantly taking notes: before and during meetings; while researching an article; while brewing beer. And I think most people have some class of information they’ll need to reference later that doesn’t quite meet the threshold of a “document.” Who wants a sprawling series of folders with all of that information?
This, to me, is what note-taking apps are for: quickly writing things down so you can read them later and (hopefully) follow up. They also work well as a personal journal, or a place to store files related to a particular project.
OneNote, above, is probably the note-taking app most people should try first. It’s free—so long as you don’t run out of OneDrive storage—and it gives you all kinds of ways to organize notes, from notebooks to sections to sub-headers. It also has powerful search, which includes the scanned contents of any images or PDFs you might drop in a note.
But OneNote isn’t the only option. You should check out our list of the best note-taking apps for more choices. If you loved Evernote back in the day, you should check out Joplin, which is a completely free and open source replacement for that app. And I personally love Obsidian, which turns your notes into an entire database, complete with internal links and an extensive plugin collection. There are a lot of good choices out there—find something that lets you write things down and dig them up later.
I’ve never tried to work in the middle of an amusement park, but I imagine it would be distracting. The internet is worse. Everything you could possibly imagine is available, all delivered by brilliant engineers who are doing everything they can to keep you looking at more and more and more of it. It’s understandable if you have trouble getting stuff done in that context, which is why apps that block distractions are so helpful.
Freedom is a great tool for the job. It runs on every platform and can block distractions—both websites and apps—on all of your devices. That means you can’t, for example, block Twitter on your computer only to pick up your phone and look at it there. With Freedom, you can set up multiple block lists, then start timers for any of them.
I personally love Serene, which combines distraction blocking with a sort of to-do list. You say what you want to do and how long it will take, then you start a distraction-free session to work on it. There’s also Cold Turkey Blocker, which can optionally prevent you from changing the time settings on your computer as a way of working around the block you set up. You’ve got more choices, though, particularly if you’re a Mac user. Check out our list of the best distraction blockers to learn more.
Remember: the internet is distracting on purpose. There’s no shame in using a tool to build discipline.
My dentist tells me I should brush my teeth twice a day, and I believe him, but I tended to only brush at night. I used a habit tracker to change that.
These applications might sound similar to a to-do list, but they’re very different. You can’t add individual tasks to a habit tracker—only recurring ones. The idea is to set an intention to do something regularly, then keep track of how often you regularly do it. Eventually, you have a streak going, which psychologically motivates you to keep it up until the habit becomes second nature. Don’t laugh—it works.
We recommend checking out Streaks, shown above, for iPhone and HabitNow, below, for Android. These apps both live on your phone, which is the place you’re most likely to look. They both let you create a list of habits you’d like to build, then remind you about that intention. They also both show you your progress in various ways.
They’re not the only options, however; check out our list of the best habit tracker apps for more ideas. Also keep in mind that some to-do lists have habit-tracking capabilities built right in. I, personally, use TickTick‘s built-in habit tracker—I love it. And some people use a paper calendar for tracking a simple habit—just add an X every day you stick to your habit.
I’d love to read articles or watch YouTube videos all day. We all would. Sometimes, though, you have to do something else—even though your friend just sent you a really, really interesting article. That’s where read-it-later apps come in. They let you quickly save something you intend to read, so that you can come back to it when you have time.
I think that Pocket, above, is the app of choice in this class. It’s free to use, offers extensions for every major browser, and also has great mobile versions that sync your articles for offline reading. There’s even built-in support for highlighting, then reviewing your highlights later.
Instapaper is a close second, and it even lets you send articles to your Kindle. These aren’t your only choices, though—check out our list of the best read-it-later apps for some more options. It’s also worth noting that some people use bookmarking apps or even note-taking apps for the same purpose, and that’s great—they both make it easy to save things for future reference.
Automate the process of saving articles by connecting your read-it-later app to Zapier. Here are some ideas to get you started.
Whether it’s for a quick presentation or troubleshooting a problem, sometimes recording what’s on your screen and sharing it just makes life easier. Screen recording tools are perfect for this, allowing you to quickly record your screen, your voice, and even your face if you have a webcam.
Loom is a great first tool to check out in this category. It’s easy to set up, works on all major platforms, and makes it really simple to share recordings. You can even add your face, via a webcam, to the recording.
I personally use Zappy, which was originally an internal tool used by Zapier. It’s honestly the best screenshot tool I’ve ever used, and it’s free—if you use a Mac, it’s worth a try. Check out our list of the best screen recording tools for more options, and keep in mind you can actually record your screen without any software, if you don’t mind managing the file yourself.
Want to share your screen in real-time? You need a screen sharing tool (Zoom works pretty well, surprisingly).
Other productivity tools worth checking out
This article could go on forever. There’s no end to great software out there, and I love writing about it. I think the above categories should save you all kinds of time—and take up plenty of your time to set up—but here are a few other suggestions if you’re feeling particularly motivated.
Password managers, like LastPass or 1Password, help you generate random passwords for all of your different services without the need for memorization. This is great for security, but it also makes logging in to stuff faster. Here’s a list of the best password managers.
Mobile scanning apps, like Microsoft Lens, let you scan documents using your phone while also digitizing any text using optical character recognition (OCR). Check out our list of the best mobile scanning OCR apps for more choices.
Time tracking apps, like Toggl Track, are great for keeping track of how long projects take and making sure you’re not spending too much time on the wrong things. Take a look at our list of the best time tracking apps to find the right one for you.
Mind mapping software, like Coggle, helps you map the connections between different ideas while you’re brainstorming. Here are our picks for the best mind mapping software.
AI software, like OpenAI, could make all kinds of tasks easier in the future. It’s early, granted, but I already find it useful when I’m in the brainstorming phase of a project—I can ask the bot to generate ideas.
Once you have apps set up in some of these categories, you can take the whole productivity thing even further. Automation software like ours at Zapier connects all the other apps you use, with workflows you can build yourself—no code required. Like the tools above, Zapier won’t solve every problem you have, but it’s a great way to connect tools that otherwise don’t integrate well—which means you can use the best tools for you, as opposed to the tools that happen to play nice together. And it’s not limited to productivity—eventually, you’ll find yourself automating even your most business-critical workflows.
Plus, if you sign up for Zapier, we’ll be able to write more useful articles like this one. Here are five things you should automate today to get started.
This post was originally published in September 2018 by Matthew Guay. The most recent update was in December 2022.
There are too many to-do list apps. Trying them all would be a massive task, and I know because I did.
Why are there so many apps for something easily done on sticky notes? Because managing tasks is an intensely personal thing. People will reject anything that doesn’t feel right. That’s a good instinct, but it makes it hard to find the right app.
To that end, we’ve been hard at work researching the best to-do apps, trying to find the right ones for various use cases. Research for these pieces was exhaustive. We started by finding the best apps for every platform: Android, Windows, macOS, and iPhone/iPad. We then tried the top-rated apps in every respective app store, and spent way too much time migrating our personal to-do lists from one app to another.
And now I’m offering you what I feel is the cream of the crop. Whatever you’re looking for, one of these apps is going to be right for you. Click on any app to learn more about why I chose it, or keep reading for more context on to-do list apps.
Other options, including project management software, note-taking apps, and other tools that can do the job
What makes the best to-do list app?
How we evaluate and test apps
All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who’ve spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it’s intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We’re never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.
I’ve written about technology in general, and productivity specifically, since 2009. In that time, I’ve personally tried basically every to-do list app that has come out, and I’m usually depending on at least one of them to function.
Of course, when it comes to managing a to-do list online, everyone has different criteria. I kept this in mind as I tested, and I noticed a few features that made certain apps stand out.
The best to-do list apps:
Make it fast to add and organize tasks. Ideally, a task is added and categorized in a couple taps or keystrokes.
Offer multiple ways to organize your tasks. Tags, lists, projects, and due dates are all helpful, and the best to-do apps offer at least a few categories like this.
Remind you about self-imposed deadlines. Notifications, widgets, emails—if you’re using an online to-do list, it should help you track what needs to happen when.
Offer clean user interfaces. The best to-do app fits into your workflow so you can get back to what you’re supposed to be doing.
Sync between every platform you use. Which platforms will depend on what you personally use, but I didn’t consider anything that doesn’t sync between desktop and mobile.
I tried to find the task list apps that balance these things in various ways. None of these options will be right for everyone, but hopefully one of them is right for you. Let’s dive in.
Make 2023 your most efficient year yet
Start the year off right with our five-email course that helps you streamline work across your whole business.
Todoist isn’t the most powerful to-do list website out there. It’s also not the simplest. That’s kind of the point: this app balances power with simplicity, and it does so while running on basically every platform that exists. That’s a strong selling point—which is probably why Todoist is one of the most popular to-do lists right now.
Adding tasks was quick on every platform in my tests, thanks in part to natural language processing (type “buy milk Monday” and the task “buy milk” will be added with the next Monday set as your due date). You can put new tasks in your Inbox and then move them to relevant projects; you can also set due dates. Paid users can create custom filters and labels, and there are also some basic collaboration features.
Todoist is flexible enough to adapt to most workflows but not so complicated as to overwhelm. And it adds new features regularly: you can view projects as a Kanban board, for example, and navigating the app by keyboard is much smoother after recent updates. Overall, this is a great first to-do list app to try out, especially if you don’t know where to start.
Todoist also integrates with Zapier, which means you can automatically create tasks in Todoist whenever something happens in one of your favorite apps. Here are some examples.
Add new Google Calendar events to Todoist as tasks
Best to-do list app with embedded calendars and timers
TickTick(Web, Android, Windows, macOS, iPhone and iPad)
TickTick is a fast-growing task list app that offers a wide array of features on just about every platform you can imagine. Adding tasks is quick thanks to natural language processing. There’s also a universal keyboard shortcut offered on the desktop versions and pinned notifications and widgets on mobile, which makes it quick to add a task before getting back to what you’re doing. Tasks can be organized using lists, tags, and due dates, and there’s also the ability to add subtasks to any task.
TickTick offers all of this with apps that feel native—the macOS version is distinct from the Windows version, for example, in ways that make sense given the differences between those two systems. TickTick also offers a few features that are above and beyond what other apps offer.
First, there’s a built-in Pomodoro timer, allowing you to start a 25-minute work session for any of your tasks (complete with numerous white noise options, if you want). Second, there’s integration with various third-party calendars, allowing you to see your tasks and your appointments in one place, and even do some time blocking. There’s also a built-in habit-tracking tool, allowing you to review how many days you did or didn’t stick to your exercise and diet commitments. And an Eisenhower Matrix view allows you to prioritize your tasks based on what’s urgent and what’s important. It’s a great collection of features, unlike anything else on the market.
With TickTick’s Zapier integration, you can connect TickTick to the other tools in your tech stack to automatically create tasks whenever you get new leads, deals, or emails.
In 2015, Microsoft bought Wunderlist and put that team to work on a new to-do list app. Microsoft To Do is the result of that, and you can find Wunderlist’s DNA throughout the project. The main interface is clean and friendly, adding tasks is quick, but there’s a lot of flexibility below the surface.
But the real standout feature here is the deep integration with Microsoft’s ecosystem. Any email flagged in Outlook, for example, shows up as a task. Outlook users can also sync their tasks from that app over to Microsoft To Do, meaning there’s finally a way to sync Outlook tasks to mobile. Windows users can add tasks using Cortana or by typing in the Start menu. For example, you can type “add rice to my shopping list,” and rice will be added to a list called “shopping.” If you’re a Windows user and an Outlook user, this is the app for you.
This is also the prettiest to-do list app on the market, in my opinion. You can set custom background images for every one of your lists, allowing you to tell at a glance which list you’re looking at. You’re going to be looking at your task list all day—it might as well look good.
Microsoft To Do integrates with Zapier, which means you can make sure Microsoft To Do is talking to all the other apps you use, not just the Microsoft ones. Here are some examples to get started.
Create Workboard action items from new tasks in Microsoft To-Do
To-do list apps tend to fall into two categories: the complex and the minimalist. Things is somehow both.
That’s about the highest praise I can give a to-do list app. This is an app with no shortage of features, and yet it always feels simple to use. Adding tasks is quick and so is organizing them, but there’s seemingly no end of variation in ways to organize them. Areas can contain tasks or projects; projects can contain tasks or headers that can also contain tasks; and tasks can contain subtasks if you want. It sounds confusing, but it isn’t, which really speaks to how well Things is designed.
Other apps offer these features, but Things does it in a way that never feels cluttered, meaning you can quickly be done with looking at your to-do list and get back to whatever it is you’re doing. Combine this blend of functionality and beauty with features like a system-wide tool for quickly adding tasks, integration with your calendar so you can see your appointments while planning your day, intuitive keyboard shortcuts, reminders with native notifications, and syncing to an iPhone and iPad app.
The only downside here is the complete lack of versions for Windows and Android, though this decision is probably part of what allows the team to focus on making such a clean product. If you’re an Apple user, you owe it to yourself to try out Things.
You can automatically add to-dos to Things from your other apps with Things’ integrations on Zapier. Here’s some inspiration.
OmniFocus is nothing if not flexible. This Apple-exclusive application is built around the Getting Things Done (GTD) philosophy trademarked by David Allen, but an array of features means it can be used for just about any organizational system you can imagine. There are three different kinds of projects you can set up, for example, depending on whether you need to do tasks in a specific order or not. There are six main views by default, allowing you to organize your tasks by things like due date, projects, and tags. You can even add more views, assuming you have the Pro version.
You get the idea. OmniFocus is a power user’s dream, with more features than anyone can hope to incorporate into a workflow, which is kind of the point: if there’s a feature you want, OmniFocus has it, so you can organize your tasks basically any way you can imagine.
Syncing is offered only between Apple devices. There’s a web version that’s intended for occasional usage away from your Apple machines, but non-Apple users should probably look elsewhere.
You can connect OmniFocus to your other favorite apps with OmniFocus’s Zapier integration. Whenever something happens in another app that you want to keep track of in OmniFocus, Zapier will automatically send it there.
Create OmniFocus tasks from new saved Slack messages
OmniFocus price: From $99.99/year for the recurring plan, which includes all apps and the web version. Also available as a one-time purchase from $49.99 (14-day free trial).
Games are fantastic at motivating mundane activity—how else can you explain all that time you’ve spent on mindless fetch quests? Habitica, formerly known as HabitRPG, tries to use principles from game design to motivate you to get things done, and it’s remarkably effective. You can add tasks, daily activities, and habits to a list. You also have a character, who levels up when you get things done and takes damage when you put things off. You can also earn in-game currency for buying offline rewards, such as a snack, or in-game items like weapons or even silly hats.
This is even better when you join a few friends and start a party. You can all fight bosses together, but be careful: fail to finish some tasks on time and your friends will take damage. If that doesn’t motivate you, nothing will.
What’s the downside? Habitica isn’t a great to-do list for managing long-term projects, so you might need something else for that. But if motivation is your problem, Habitica is well worth a spin.
Habitica price: Free version available; paid version from $5/month.
If you live in Gmail and Google Calendar, Google Tasks is an obvious free to-do list app to try out. That’s because it lives right in the sidebar of those two apps, and offers more than a few integrations. Plus, there’s a dedicated mobile app.
The app itself is spartan. Adding tasks is quick, particularly if you spend a lot of time in Gmail anyway, but there’s not a lot of organizational offerings. There are due dates, lists, descriptions, subtasks, and the ability to “Star” tasks. There’s not much beyond that, which is ok. On the desktop, the integration with Gmail is a key selling point. You can drag an email to Google Tasks to turn it into a task, for example. You also can see your tasks on your Google Calendar, if you want.
The best to-do app is one that’s always handy. If you’re the kind of person who always has Gmail open on your computer, it’s hard for any app to be handier than Google Tasks. The mobile versions make those tasks accessible on the go.
You can automatically move information between Google Tasks and your other apps with Google Tasks’ integration on Zapier. Here are a few examples of workflows you can automate, so you can stop manually moving your tasks.
Any.do offers a really slick mobile app that makes it quick to add tasks, organize them into lists, and add due dates. But where it really shines is with its daily “Plan my Day” feature, which forces you to schedule when you’ll accomplish your various tasks, so that you remember to actually do things. Any.do also integrates nicely with Google and Outlook calendars, allowing you to see your appointments and your tasks in one place. This is exactly what you need if you’re the kind of person who adds things to a list and forgets about them.
The desktop version isn’t quite as slick as the mobile version—it feels cluttered and is more than a little confusing. Still, Any.do’s mobile version alone makes a compelling reason to give it a shot, especially if that’s where you do most of your task management.
Any.do integrates with Zapier, so you can automatically add tasks to Any.do whenever there’s a new calendar event, note, or task in your other apps.
Any.do price: Free version available; paid version from $2.99/month.
Other to-do list options
We focused on dedicated to-do list apps in this roundup, but plenty of other software can fulfill the same function. Here are a few ideas if none of the above quite fit what you’re looking for:
Project management apps like Trello and Asana can be used as to-do lists, especially if you already use them to manage your other work.
Note-taking apps like Evernote, OneNote, and Google Keep also have to-do list features, if you want to combine your to-do lists and notes.
