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Undocumented "backdoor" found in Bluetooth chip used by a billion devices
(www.bleepingcomputer.com)
this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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What is this article on about?
Here's the actual presentation: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25554812-2025-rootedcon-bluetoothtools/
I don't speak Spanish and only have the slides to go off of, but this doesn't sound like a "backdoor". ~~This sounds like they found the commands for regulatory testing. To do emissions testing you need to be able to make the device transmit on command so that your testing house can verify you're within legal limits on everything.~~
~~These are commands that can be given over USB. You know what else you can do over USB? Fucking anything, these chips have a JTAG USB device. (Now, if these are commands that can't be turned off, that would be kinda bad, I guess? But still not really a super big problem. And I don't see anything that implies that in the slides.)~~
[Edit: It's not even that this is a "backdoor" in an internal peripheral interface. I think the "backdoor" is if you have software that exposes that interface somehow? Like you're running an example that blindly copies stuff from an external UART to this interface? Like I think that's it?]
The tone I get from the slides is more "hey we found this cool tool for doing Bluetooth stuff that doesn't require writing embedded software". Which, cool. But that's sure not the point this article is trying to make.
The discoverers themselves refer to it as a backdoor, so frankly I don't know what you're on about accusing this article of misrepresenting their findings.
Huh, that is interesting. Though, that post doesn't seem to have any info about what the backdoor is either.
Maybe the presentation has nothing to do with the actual backdoor?
Though, this part later might seem to imply they are related:
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...
@antoniovazquezblanco@mastodon.social 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
Please correct if inaccurate, but I don't see in that article where the folks at Espressif refer to it as a backdoor, only the security company. This seems to me as though it is no more vulnerable than any other device which can be compromised by physical access, which is most of devices. The vulnerability really looks to be more in the ability to pivot to other devices remotely after one has been compromised physically, which isn't ideal, but still doesn't seem to me to be any less secure than most other devices.