5th November, 2018
2 Min read
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Security researchers have unveiled details of two critical vulnerabilities in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) chips embedded in millions of access points and networking devices used by enterprises around the world.
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Dubbed BleedingBit, the set of two vulnerabilities could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code and take full control of vulnerable devices without authentication, including medical devices such as insulin pumps and pacemakers, as well as point-of-sales and IoT devices.
Discovered by researchers at Israeli security firm Armis, the vulnerabilities exist in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Stack chips made by Texas Instruments (TI) that are being used by Cisco, Meraki, and Aruba in their enterprise line of products.
Armis is the same security firm that last year discovered BlueBorne, a set of nine zero-day Bluetooth-related flaws in Android, Windows, Linux and iOS that affected billions of devices, including smartphones, laptops, TVs, watches and automobile audio systems.
The first vulnerability, identified as CVE-2018-16986, exists in TI chips CC2640 and CC2650 and affects many Cisco and Meraki’s Wi-Fi access points. The bug takes advantage of a loophole in the way Bluetooth chips analyze incoming data.
The second vulnerability, identified as CVE-2018-7080, resides in CC2642R2, CC2640R2, CC2640, CC2650, CC2540, and CC2541 TI chips, and affects Aruba’s Wi-Fi access point Series 300.
This vulnerability stems from an issue with Texas Instruments’ firmware update feature in BLE chips called Over the Air firmware Download (OAD).
Since all Aruba access points share the same OAD password which can be “obtained by sniffing a legitimate update or by reverse-engineering Aruba’s BLE firmware,” an attacker can deliver a malicious update to the targeted access point and rewrite its operating system, gaining full control over the device.
Read more: The Hacker News