The original presentation is available in Spanish only.
The ubiquitous ESP32 microchip made by Chinese manufacturer Espressif and used by over 1 billion units as of 2023 contains an undocumented “backdoor” that could be leveraged for attacks.
The undocumented commands allow spoofing of trusted devices, unauthorized data access, pivoting to other devices on the network, and potentially establishing long-term persistence.
This was discovered by Spanish researchers Miguel Tarascó Acuña and Antonio Vázquez Blanco of Tarlogic Security, who presented their findings yesterday at RootedCON in Madrid.
“Tarlogic Security has detected a backdoor in the ESP32, a microcontroller that enables WiFi and Bluetooth connection and is present in millions of mass-market IoT devices,” reads a Tarlogic announcement shared with BleepingComputer.
“Exploitation of this backdoor would allow hostile actors to conduct impersonation attacks and permanently infect sensitive devices such as mobile phones, computers, smart locks or medical equipment by bypassing code audit controls.”
The researchers warned that ESP32 is one of the world’s most widely used chips for Wi-Fi + Bluetooth connectivity in IoT (Internet of Things) devices, so the risk of any backdoor in them is significant.
[…]
According to commmentary that I’ve read on HN and Slashdot, it’s not really an exploit if you have to flash your own firmware onto the device to access these funtions. Apparently debug access like this is not uncommon on microcontrollers like the ESP32, and it’s not exploitable wirelessly as long as your code isn’t complete crap.
it’s not exploitable wirelessly as long as your code isn’t complete crap.
Sounds like validation for my insistence on only buying IoT devices that I can flash with Tasmota, ESPHome, WLED, or other open source firmware.
