Why ignoring end of life timelines is a bad idea
A more accurate headline to accompany last week’s Techcrunch article would be “Security flaws found in a legacy guest Wi-Fi system once used in hundreds of hotels”. That aside the discovery of the FDXtended HSMX Gateway vulnerabilities reminds us all that software is not built to last forever. The HSMX Gateway has been end of support since Nov 2020 but it seems there are still a few gateways out there.
There are many reasons why software doesn’t get replaced: sometimes compatibility issues, maybe short-term cost concerns. Sooner or later vulnerabilities are found and the risks accumulate. There’s a good reason we’re not all running laptops with Windows7.
Feature development for the fdxtended HSMX Gateway stopped in 2017, partners were informed in June 2018 that HSMX would not receive new features, security, or system updates after end-of-support was reached in November 2020.
How do I know if my hotel is affected?
The fdxtended business was acquired by Airangel in 2017, and the HSMX appliance and its partner base formed part of this deal. Airangel never sold HSMX to its direct customers and since the acquisition, the world’s leading hotels have migrated their guest internet services to the Airangel Captivnet Cloud.
If you have purchased directly from Airangel then you didn’t buy HSMX and your solution remains secure. All Airangel cloud solutions are unaffected.
HSMX was resold and rebranded by partners including use of the names IPConnect & Tiger Gateway so these names may be more familiar to you.
What should I do if I have a HSMX Gateway?
We are advising the few remaining HSMX gateway users to disable remote access, remove HSMX from their networks and to replace with Captivnet.
Captivnet is the leading cloud-based SaaS solution for Hotel Guest Internet Management which is used by the world’s leading hotel brands and 7 of the leading 10 global service providers to Hospitality. With an easy monthly subscription hotels manage their guest experience and security from the cloud with all gateways running the latest release.
If you still have HSMX on your network then contact Airangel via airangel.com/hsmx
