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.
First thing I have always done when I get an ESP32 is to flash my own custom firmware on it. Who actually uses the stock ESP32 firmware, it doesn’t do anything.