81–90 of 92 posts
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The researcher-or-tinkerer who wants to play with these commands can just not upgrade to the newer ESP-IDF. Or update to a newer ESP-IDF, and revert the patch. It's open source. https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf
Yeah but getting stuck on an old version of ESP-IDF is annoying.
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I agree, hence my direct comment of malicious firmware… For me, the open question is, can one still write a malicious firmware on the ESP32 without the non documented opcodes?
Yes. You can write whatever malicious firmware in a hardware you have physical access, with or without the undocumented opcodes. Not OTA though, unless there's a bug in the radio stack. Is not an open question.
In other words, this was a beatup for internet points, not, in any way, an actual security issue.
How you think always-open debug is NOT a security issue? The blog post is a "nothing to see here". You really fell for it? Do we still do car analogies? Here's this car with just a ignition button without keys, and keys to your home in the glovebox and the address already on the GPS... but the thief would have to break into the car first!
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It is a relative small company which is catering the DIY market. To build any substantial user base with industrial applications, I guess their way is to continue to be open and enable people to build DIY stuff and a tiny fraction of these will one day build products with ESP chips inside.
They are in a -lot- of edge devices. They became popular with DIY because they were a very cheap and capable option with the esp8266, which hackers converted from ultracheap UART to WiFi modules into general purpose mcus. They became the DIY default because instead of ignoring this, they embraced it and published specs and translated data sheets. Their diy friendly approach has garnered them a ton of software support…
A Hildebrand IHD (reads the smart meters and pops the readings onto an MQTT topic). The Octopus Home Mini, and finally, a Tado wireless controller.
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From TFA: > The ESP32 series of chips support open-source NimBLE and Bluedroid as Bluetooth host stacks. The undocumented commands in question (which implement the debug interface) are about to become documented, and Espressif was both transparent in their publication, and pledged for more transparency moving forward. How much more do you want?
I think that they handled this particular issue well. It was more rant about general state of things in the industry. I worked with Nordic chips and they also supply enormous 120 KB proprietary blob called SoftDevice which you supposed to put into your firmware and let it own all the interrupts. This is terrible experience.
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How you think always-open debug is NOT a security issue? The blog post is a "nothing to see here". You really fell for it? Do we still do car analogies? Here's this car with just a ignition button without keys, and keys to your home in the glovebox and the address already on the GPS... but the thief would have to break into the car first!
There's nothing to "fall for". Do you have specific evidence that refutes Espressif's rationale for why they believe it's not a security issue. No, a flawed car analogy doesn't count. If you can break into the application running on an ESP32, you already have full access to RAM etc. The debug HCI commands will not give you any extra access. Yes, security researchers are incentivized to make issues seem like more of a…
* as we assumed with sbcs like raspberypi earlier...
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It is a relative small company which is catering the DIY market. To build any substantial user base with industrial applications, I guess their way is to continue to be open and enable people to build DIY stuff and a tiny fraction of these will one day build products with ESP chips inside.
> It is a relative small company which is catering the DIY market. Is that really all it is? I’ve got multiple IOT devices from major vendors that use esp32. I’ve also seen multiple EV chargers that leverage the platform.
You should be switching off the bluetooth on your device if is not needed. CE also has some regulations regarding this. I use the ESP32 in my product[1] I am glad they exist. Their per-certified modules save you quite a bit of money when you do your CE testing. Espressif also offer free design review if you are using their chip in your commercial project/product[2]. [1] https://www.stationdisplay.com/ [2] https://www…
Which good alternatives to esp32 are there? Thinking most on functionality, dont care so much about the cost.