Technology

A lot of people are dumb. Or maybe because they feel offended because they are Chinese, but the reality is that every Chinese company is ultimately controlled by the CCP. If I was fighting a cold war, I would do the same. Sell compromised devices to my trade partners (AKA enemies) so I have leverage when I need it.

There's been a lot of that lately. Same here in New Zealand.

You dipshits, they're both the bad guys now.

Exactly what it is. A gross example of company trying to get their name out their by sensationalizing their findings.

There is nothing to "fix". Undocumented instructions have just been found in the silicon but they are not executable unless the ESP32's firmware their owner flashed to give it a purpose uses them. No pre-2025 firmware that we know of uses these instructions, and they might turn out to be buggy so compilers might not adopt them. If they turn out OK, the documentation of the instruction set will need an update, and compilers will be able to take advantage of the new instructions.

Here’s an article with a bit more detail… but I’m still unclear whether these backdoor commands are hardware circuits or firmware logic.

Bleeping Computer: Undocumented "backdoor" found in Bluetooth chip used by a billion devices

It ain't so.

To use the "backdoor" an attacker needs to have full access to the esp32 powered device already.

It's like claiming that being able to leave your desk without locking your PC is a backdoor in your OS.

Say it ain't so
Your bug is a heartbleeder
Say it ain't so
My NIC is a bytetaker

The article is talking about the Espressif ESP32 micro controller (has Wi-Fi/Classic Bluetooth/BLE).

I don't know if the variants of this chip also have the same vulnerability (my guess is yes). As someone who works on this chip, I'm interested in more discourse on this matter.