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Former NSA cyberspy's not-so-secret hobby – Xmas light hacks (www.theregister.com)

submitted 2 days ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] socphoenix@midwest.social 9 points 2 days 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 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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 4 hours 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?