Researcher Finds MQTT Hole in IoT Defenses

guest · Aug 17, 2018

Researcher Finds MQTT Hole in IoT Defenses
A commonly used protocol provides a gaping backdoor when misconfigured.
August 16, 2018
https://www.darkreading.com/iot/researcher-finds-mqtt-hole-in-iot-defenses/d/d-id/1332573

It started with a simple wish: Martin Horn, security researcher at Avast, wanted a smart home [...]
Horn realized that many of the hubs gathering IoT devices into a unified system run Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol, an ISO standard for device-to-device communications. And quite a lot of the devices acting as MQTT servers have no security at all. It's not that they use a default user name and password, Horn says, it's that they don't have user names or passwords - period.

"It's not a flaw in IoT devices themselves, it's just a lack of security," Horn says. "In this case, it's wide open, with no password at all." It's important to note, he explains in an Avast blog post, that the MQTT protocol itself is secure, if implemented and configured correctly. The lack of security is the fault of the implementation, not the underlying protocol.

Protecting these vulnerable devices is simple in concept: Add a username and password [...] In other cases, it's impossible, because the device manufacturer didn't make allowances for the addition.
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guest · Oct 18, 2018

New Security Woes for Popular IoT Protocols
October 18, 2018
https://www.darkreading.com/vulnera...woes-for-popular-iot-protocols/d/d-id/1333069

He found data on sensors and other devices sitting in manufacturing and automotive networks, for instance, as well as typical consumer Internet of Things (IoT) gadgets.
[...] and dug deeper into how both MQTT and its companion, the Constrained Application Protocol, or CoAP, could be abused by attackers.

MQTT and CoAP basically serve as the backbone of IoT and industrial IoT communications. As Maggi and Quarta discovered, the protocols often are deployed in devices insecurely, leaking sensitive information such as device details, user credentials, and network configuration information. The pair of researchers will present details and data from their findings in December at Black Hat Europe in London.
Malicious Software Updates
MQTT can also be used for software and firmware updates in IoT and industrial IoT devices. "So draw your own conclusions" about risks, Maggi says. "We found ... firmware passing through MQTT as part of an update."

While the researchers were able to easily identify MQTT servers via Shodan, what was alarming was how that led them to sensitive data. The ability to actually connect directly to the discovered devices was "more scary" than finding a device via Shodan [...]
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