this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2024
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Former NSA cyberspy's not-so-secret hobby – Xmas light hacks (www.theregister.com)
submitted 7 months ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] demesisx@infosec.pub 27 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

Unless your lights are hard-wired or connecting to a locked down guest WiFi network, you are exposing your WiFi credentials to potential attackers.

The microcontrollers that control Christmas lights are riddled with backdoors and holes.

That’s probably the real reason that this piece of shit NSA spook wants everyone to have smart Christmas lights.

[–] socphoenix@midwest.social 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The security researcher, LimitedResults, coordinated disclosure with Espressif on their advisory and details of the exploit. The attack works against eFuse, a one-time programmable memory where data can be burned to the device.

By burning a payload into the device’s eFuse, no software update can ever reset the fuse and the chip must be physically replaced or the device discarded. A key risk is that the attack does not fully replace the firmware, so the device may appear to work as normal.

Why does a random esp32 chip need efuses in the first place??

[–] dgriffith@aussie.zone 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

It's designed and implemented for copy protection. Otherwise you can design a esp32 device that includes software you've written and 15 minutes later a clone device with exactly the same software will appear on <insert Chinese electronics website here>

[–] socphoenix@midwest.social 1 points 7 months ago

I mostly understand how these fuses prevent say downgrading firmware, but could t a Chinese firm looking to clone one of these also just clone the number of blow. Fuses equally trivially if the goal is just an also working device with stock firmware?

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