FireEye’s Mandiant Red Team recently discovered vulnerabilities present on the Logitech Harmony Hub Internet of Things (IoT) device that could potentially be exploited, resulting in root access to the device via SSH. The Harmony Hub is a home control system designed to connect to and control a variety of devices in the user’s home. Exploitation of these vulnerabilities from the local network could allow an attacker to control the devices linked to the Hub as well as use the Hub as an execution space to attack other devices on the local network. As the Harmony Hub device list includes support for devices such as smart locks, smart thermostats as well as other smart home devices, these vulnerabilities present a very high risk to the users.
FireEye disclosed these vulnerabilities to Logitech in January 2018. Logitech was receptive and has coordinated with FireEye to release this blog post in conjunction with a firmware update (4.15.96) to address these findings.
The Red Team discovered the following vulnerabilities:
- Improper certificate validation
- Insecure update process
- Developer debugging symbols left in the production firmware image
- Blank root user password
The Red Team used a combination of the vulnerabilities to gain administrative access to the Harmony Hub. This blog post outlines the discovery and analysis process, and demonstrates the necessity of rigorous security testing of consumer devices – particularly as the public places an increasing amount of trust in devices that are not just connected to home networks, but also give access to many details about the daily lives of their users.
