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ESP32/ESP8266 Wi-Fi Attacks

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Re: ESP32/ESP8266 Wi-Fi Attacks

#131
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also really capable processors on their own with some nice I/O, and they can be integrated to be really low power so things can run on battery power for months to years.

Can they really last that long (on their own)? I looked into this when the ESP8266 first became popular maybe 4 years ago as I wanted to build WiFi temperature and humidity sensors. My calculations were that a set of AAA rechargable batteries (~2000mAh) would last a few days at most, with the device in deep sleep most of the time and waking up every 10 mins to take a reading and send it over WiFi. Right now I'm looki…

I was able to power ESP-12E based humidity and temperature sensor for about 6 months from 18650 cell. I've used deep sleep and 15 minutes intervals between readings.

Re: ESP32/ESP8266 Wi-Fi Attacks

#132
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are really nice $5 chips with Wifi programmable with the Arduino toolset. Tons of IoT people use these to integrate various instrumentation and control into their houses or science projects. For instance, you can hook one up to a temperature sensor and a relay and control your heater. There are probably millions of these installed, hooked up to important hardware. So this makes wardriving fun again, I guess, if…

How do you power them conveniently though? I can wrap my head around doing the soldering. But power means either power adapter or battery? If I’m doing power I might as well use a raspberry.

I tend to power my devices via a simple USB phone-charger.

Like the parent I have a few temperature/humidity sensors dotted around the house. Using a PI would be overkill and I'd have to keep the system packages up to date, worry about failing storage-device, etc.

Re: ESP32/ESP8266 Wi-Fi Attacks

#133
post #104
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, a national security letter can't do this. It can only compel the release of collected metadata to agencies.

Are holes in security infrastructure required to collect metadata? Are keys, data that secures content - considered metadata? They're not content. Since you can't discuss the letters publicly, a claim could be that it is metadata, and compel keeping the request to collect it as such secret - similarly the fight from the silenced party, if there were any fight, could be out of public visibility.

No they aren't. Read the Wikipedia page you linked to.

It's great that you can make claims like this based on zero evidence or even allegations, but there is no basis in fact for it.

What's more the number of 3rd party people that have to be involved in something like this make it virtually impossible that the national security letter structure could keep them all silent, especially since there are numerous foreign nationals in the supply chains.

Go read the huge amount of ACLU coverage of these, or the many articles linked, or the congressional testimony. There are no allegations that this mechanism is being used to do what you say.

Re: ESP32/ESP8266 Wi-Fi Attacks

#134
post #90
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they can ask & issue orders to not discuss the matter, They can't do that.

You seem to be making specific, narrow arguments to cast doubt on a much wider claim. Care to state your belief about the relations between the TLAs and the larger networking and communications firms in the US?

You seem to be making specific, narrow arguments to cast doubt on a much wider claim.

Not the OP, but I think that addressing specific parts of the claim is extremely important.

We've seen this around the PRISM program, where the allegations of support by tech companies were confused by their support for lawful law enforcment warrants (as opposed to the NSA's dragnet surveillance via PRISM). This confusion has reached the point where I saw a lecturer claiming Google helped the NSA collect data as part of PRISM, where the NSA's own slides[1] show the opposite[2].

[1] The famous "smiley slide" https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/new-docs-show-ns... or https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/nsa-muscular-program-sp...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/googl...

Re: ESP32/ESP8266 Wi-Fi Attacks

#135
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also really capable processors on their own with some nice I/O, and they can be integrated to be really low power so things can run on battery power for months to years.

Can they really last that long (on their own)? I looked into this when the ESP8266 first became popular maybe 4 years ago as I wanted to build WiFi temperature and humidity sensors. My calculations were that a set of AAA rechargable batteries (~2000mAh) would last a few days at most, with the device in deep sleep most of the time and waking up every 10 mins to take a reading and send it over WiFi. Right now I'm looki…

Here's a cool project for farm telemetry: http://www.geekstips.com/two-esp8266-communication-talk-each...

Star-mesh topology, with batteries on the leaf nodes. Solar further in. Excerpt: "I’m expecting about 3 months at a 5min log interval using a 2000mAh lipo battery."

Re: ESP32/ESP8266 Wi-Fi Attacks

#136
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also really capable processors on their own with some nice I/O, and they can be integrated to be really low power so things can run on battery power for months to years.

Can they really last that long (on their own)? I looked into this when the ESP8266 first became popular maybe 4 years ago as I wanted to build WiFi temperature and humidity sensors. My calculations were that a set of AAA rechargable batteries (~2000mAh) would last a few days at most, with the device in deep sleep most of the time and waking up every 10 mins to take a reading and send it over WiFi. Right now I'm looki…

Personal experience: I have a ESP32 that runs as a sort of weather station. It has a ~2000mAh battery and lasts almost 2 months, getting a data point once every 30 minutes. That is using the ESPHome to program it.

Even at once every 10 minutes, it should manage almost 3 weeks without requiring a recharge.

Some options that definitely help is to quicken the Wifi reconnect. ESPHome has options to disable AP scanning and doing a fast-and-dirty connect&send. Using MQTT also helped a lot compared to using HTTP.

The most important part is to reduce the on-time as much as possible. 30 seconds is still way above the lower limit that I can do. If you halve it you can double the amount of data points without additional energy by reducing the sleep time.

I'm working on replacing the battery with a solar panel and supercap to power it from ambient shadow light entirely, the numbers to agree that it is possible in my case. Would help to keep it alive in cold weather.

Re: ESP32/ESP8266 Wi-Fi Attacks

#137
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, no soldering. Here's an example of the sort of thing that is sat on my desk: https://lastminuteengineers.com/esp8266-dht11-dht22-web-serv... If a NodeMCU board is too big for you then an ESP 01S is smaller and even cheaper. Less I/O options though but very useful. Needs a writer and wires to program. You can get one with a relay that is capable of switching 16A. https://frenck.dev/diy-smart-doorbell-for-just-2-d…

Thank you, I've got software expertise but no hardware at all, I've been looking for something like this.

The ESP 01S is particularly good once you get to grips with writing to them because you can power them from any old phone charger that spits out 5V. You simply cut off the plug, look for the wire with the white stripe on it to determine polarity, strip the ends and screw into the relay block.

Be prepared to wave goodbye to your spare time and seriously consider a separate VLAN/SSID for these things.

Re: ESP32/ESP8266 Wi-Fi Attacks

#138
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are really nice $5 chips with Wifi programmable with the Arduino toolset. Tons of IoT people use these to integrate various instrumentation and control into their houses or science projects. For instance, you can hook one up to a temperature sensor and a relay and control your heater. There are probably millions of these installed, hooked up to important hardware. So this makes wardriving fun again, I guess, if…

Just to give you some idea of how easy these are to use: In 20 mins with a small breadboard, a few Dupont wires, a Nodemcu ESP8266, a DHT22 with a pull up resister I've got a desk temperature sensor. Add: https://esphome.io/ ... and it talks MQTT and connects straight into Home Assistant.

[deleted]

Re: ESP32/ESP8266 Wi-Fi Attacks

#139
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No soldering needed?

Yes, no soldering. Here's an example of the sort of thing that is sat on my desk: https://lastminuteengineers.com/esp8266-dht11-dht22-web-serv... If a NodeMCU board is too big for you then an ESP 01S is smaller and even cheaper. Less I/O options though but very useful. Needs a writer and wires to program. You can get one with a relay that is capable of switching 16A. https://frenck.dev/diy-smart-doorbell-for-just-2-d…

Heh, I came across your site last week, so thank you! (Oh, maybe it's not your site)

I got the DHT22 to work at 3.3V. But an old 1-Wire DS18B20 I have is very finicky. The pullup needs to be 500-800 ohms. Any experience with 1-wire at 3.3V? (Parasitic power mode). Worked great on a 5V nano.

Re: ESP32/ESP8266 Wi-Fi Attacks

#140
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you power them conveniently though? I can wrap my head around doing the soldering. But power means either power adapter or battery? If I’m doing power I might as well use a raspberry.

I tend to power my devices via a simple USB phone-charger. Like the parent I have a few temperature/humidity sensors dotted around the house. Using a PI would be overkill and I'd have to keep the system packages up to date, worry about failing storage-device, etc.

Yep. Most have a micro-USB connector which supplies power, and handles uploading/logging. So when you're done debugging, you just need a phone charger with a long enough cable.
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