Undocumented "backdoor" found in Bluetooth chip used by a billion devices
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It's mostly a nothing burger. You basically need to have code already running on the chips. It's less of a backdoor and more of just an undocumented function. That may sound scary but it's rather common in production chips. In some ways it's a good thing, it means there are now more possibilities for messing with the chip and doing fun stuff with it.
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Huh, that is interesting. Though, that post doesn't seem to have any info about what the backdoor is either.
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. [...] This discovery is part of the ongoing research carried out by the Innovation Department of Tarlogic on the Bluetooth standard. Thus, the company has also presented at RootedCON, the world’s largest Spanish-language cybersecurity conference, BluetoothUSB, a free tool that enables the development of tests for Bluetooth security audits regardless of the operating system of the devices. [Emphasis mine.]
Maybe the presentation has nothing to do with the actual backdoor?
Though, this part later might seem to imply they are related:
In the course of the investigation, a backdoor was discovered in the ESP32 chip, [...] Tarlogic has detected that ESP32 chips [...] have hidden commands not documented by the manufacturer. These commands would allow modifying the chips arbitrarily to unlock additional functionalities, [...].
Which, best I can work out, seems to be talking about the information on slide titled "COMANDOS OCULTOS" (page 39 / "41").
If the "backdoor" is the couple of commands in red on that slide, I maintain what I said above. If it's not talking about that and there's another "backdoor" that they haven't described yet, well, then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ we'll see what it is when they actually announce it.
I fully acknowledge there may be something I'm missing. If there's a real vuln/backdoor here, I'm sure we'll hear more about it.
Maybe we can find out for sure through the magic of the fediverse...
@[email protected] Is the "backdoor" mentioned in https://www.tarlogic.com/news/backdoor-esp32-chip-infect-ot-devices/ about what you shared in your RootedCON talk? If so, how worried should people using devices containing ESP32s be?
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TLDR:
They found debugging commands that can be used to access the memory of the device over USB. This is as much a backdoor as any device that runs unsigned firmware
Unless you store secret files on your Bluetooth dongle, you shouldn't have to worry about this.
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Maybe we can find out for sure through the magic of the fediverse...
@[email protected] Is the "backdoor" mentioned in https://www.tarlogic.com/news/backdoor-esp32-chip-infect-ot-devices/ about what you shared in your RootedCON talk? If so, how worried should people using devices containing ESP32s be?
None. People that have physical access to you device can write malicious firmware. Which they can already do with physical access
It's an overblown nothing-burger. Calling it a backdoor is a security researcher juicing up some minor finding
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Nothing new, this is why I always use devices with cable (keyboard, mouse, headphones....). It's somewhat less comfortable as with Bluetooth, but way more safe and stable.
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TLDR:
They found debugging commands that can be used to access the memory of the device over USB. This is as much a backdoor as any device that runs unsigned firmware
Unless you store secret files on your Bluetooth dongle, you shouldn't have to worry about this.
Thanks for the clarification because that headline sure is worrisome.
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Billions of devices? Is this bluetooth chip made by the Java people?
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https://www.espressif.com/en/news/Response_ESP32_Bluetooth
Espressif released a statement about it. It's basically a debug function for internal use. It can't actually do anything you couldn't do via other means, with that level of access.
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Nothing new, this is why I always use devices with cable (keyboard, mouse, headphones....). It's somewhat less comfortable as with Bluetooth, but way more safe and stable.
Yes I always worry about people listening to my Bluetooth headphones.
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TLDR:
They found debugging commands that can be used to access the memory of the device over USB. This is as much a backdoor as any device that runs unsigned firmware
Unless you store secret files on your Bluetooth dongle, you shouldn't have to worry about this.
It's not even over USB by default. It's an internal binary driver API. The USB part is a custom firmware for the ESP that exposes that api via USB that the people giving the talk wrote because it's useful for pentesting / development of exploits for other Bluetooth devices.
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