this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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Undocumented Commands Found In Bluetooth Chip Manufactured in China Used By a Billion Devices. (www.tarlogic.com)
submitted 18 hours ago* (last edited 11 minutes ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
138 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Source Link Privacy.Privacy test result

https://themarkup.org/blacklight?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tarlogic.com%2Fnews%2Fbackdoor-esp32-chip-infect-ot-devices%2F&device=mobile&location=us-ca&force=false

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. 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.

Update: The ESP32 "backdoor" that wasn't.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 hours ago

Fukin dmnit! I just spent the last several months fine tuning a PCB design supporting this platform. I have , what i believe to be my last iteration, being sent to fab now. I have to look i to this. My solution isnt using bluetooth, so i dont know if im vulnerable.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 hours ago

Weird that they removed the reference to ESP32, one of the most common and widely known microcontrollers, from the headline.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

This turned racist / xenophobic real quickly.

There have been several other posts about this without mentioning China at all, especially in the post itself.

No where in the article does it say "chinese", literally anywhere.

The chip is MANUFACTURED in China.

Check your racism.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

I agree we shouldn't be racist against Chinese people, but you're ignorant. From wikipedia: ESP32 is created and developed by Espressif Systems, a Chinese company based in Shanghai, and is manufactured by TSMC using their 40 nm process.It is a successor to the ESP8266 microcontroller.

So it's designed/developed in China and manufactured in Taiwan; not China.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 24 minutes ago

Dog whistling.

This has nothing to do with the chip or who makes it.

It's the way it's written.

You missed the point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 minutes ago

No. Fuck the Chinese. All 17billion of them.

/s

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

I actually wanted to keep the title short, but I think it would be better to edit the title to avoid any confusion to make it clear that it's manufactured in China, rather than saying it in the current way.

Edit: I edited the title to reflect the details better.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Thank you, your explanation / edit is much appreciated 👏 🥳 ❤️

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

💜Thank you for correcting me.

I edited it now 😄

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 hours ago

Also, thank you for showing people that there's space for these types of comments that lead to a pleasant and meaningful exchange!

This means more to me than you know 🥹

Appreciate you!

❤️🩷🧡💛💚💙🩵💜🤎🖤🩶🤍

[–] [email protected] 63 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

This sounds like there are some undocumented opcodes on the HCI side -- the Host Computer Interface -- not the wireless side. By itself, it's not that big a deal. If someone can prove that there's some sort of custom BLE packet that gives access to those HCI opcodes wirelessly, I'd be REALLY concerned.

But if it's just on the host side, you can only get to it if you've cracked the box and have access to the wiring. If someone has that kind of access, they're likely to be able to flash their own firmware and take over the whole device anyway.

Not sure this disclosure increases the risk any. I wouldn't start panicking.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

So explained to me, a tech illiterate in comparison, this is China bad scaremongering?
'Backdoor' sounds malicious with intent.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

The article is a security company trying to hype their company with a theoretical attack that currently has no hypothetical way to be abused

The article has an update now fixing the wording to "hidden feature" but, spoilers, every BT device has vendor specific commands.

The documentation of the part just wasn't complete and this companies "fuzzing" tool found some vendor commands that weren't in the data sheet

The China part just came from OP

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

thank you

[–] [email protected] 93 points 12 hours ago

I hate it when an attacker who already has root access to my device gets sightly more access to the firmware. Definitely spin up a website and a logo, maybe a post in Bloomberg.

[–] [email protected] 125 points 15 hours ago (4 children)

We really should be pushing for fully open source stack (firmware, os) in all iot devices. They are not very complicated so this should be entirely possible. Probably will need a EU law though.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Open source stack will not prevent this. It's not even a backdoor, it's functionality that these researches think should be hidden from programmers for whatever reason.

Open source devices would have this functionality readily available for programmers. Look at rtl-sdr, using the words of these researches, it has a "backdoor" where a TV dongle may be used to listen to garage key fobs gasp everyone panic now!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

thats a very fair point, I had not seen anyone else make this one But the problem is that in this case, this functionality was entirely undocumented. I dont think it was intended for programmers.

Now if the firmware was open source, people would have gotten to know about this much sooner even if not documented. Also such functionality should ideally be gated somehow through some auth mechanism.

Also just like how the linux kernel allows decades old devices to be at the very least patched for security risks, open firmware would allow users of this chip to patch it themselves for bugs, security issues.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago

Yeah, of course, it would be better in many ways if the firmware wasn't closed.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I 100% believe firmware should be open source no question about it. There's so many devices out there especially phones and iot devices that just become e-waste because you can't do anything with it once it's not supported if it was open source and documented in some way then it could be used. I have like five cheap phones that I got because they were so cheap but once they lost support they've become completely useless even though they still work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

This is about silicon. Undocumented instructions have just been found in it but they are not executable unless the ESP32's firmware uses them. Firmware cannot be edited to use them unless you have an existing vulnerability such as physical access or insecure OTA in existing firmware (as far as researchers know).

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 hours ago

Backdoored devices are useful for people who can impede that.

And the way EU is approaching privacy, surveillance and all such, - oh-hoh-ho, I don't think there will be a EU law.

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