Mandiant Discloses Critical Vulnerability Affecting Millions of IoT Devices

Today, Mandiant disclosed a critical risk vulnerability in coordination with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (“CISA”) that affects millions of IoT devices that use the ThroughTek “Kalay” network. This vulnerability, discovered by researchers on Mandiant’s Red Team in late 2020, would enable adversaries to remotely compromise victim IoT devices, resulting in the ability to listen to live audio, watch real time video data, and compromise device credentials for further attacks based on exposed device functionality. These further attacks could include actions that would allow an adversary to remotely control affected devices.

At the time of writing this blog post, ThroughTek advertises having more than 83 million active devices and over 1.1 billion monthly connections on their platform. ThroughTek’s clients include IoT camera manufacturers, smart baby monitors, and Digital Video Recorder (“DVR”) products. Unlike the vulnerability published by researchers from Nozomi Networks in May 2021 (also in coordination with CISA), this latest vulnerability allows attackers to communicate with devices remotely. As a result, further attacks could include actions that would allow an adversary to remotely control affected devices and could potentially lead to remote code execution.

The Kalay protocol is implemented as a Software Development Kit (“SDK”) which is built into client software (e.g. a mobile or desktop application) and networked IoT devices, such as smart cameras. Due to how the Kalay protocol is integrated by original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”) and resellers before devices reach consumers, Mandiant is unable to determine a complete list of products and companies affected by the discovered vulnerability.

This vulnerability has been assigned a CVSS3.1 base score of 9.6 and is tracked as CVE-2021-28372 and FEYE-2021-0020. This blog post discusses the Kalay network and CVE-2021-28372 at a high level. It also includes recommendations from ThroughTek and Mandiant, along with mitigation options.

Mandiant would like to thank both CISA and ThroughTek for their coordination and support in releasing this advisory.

source- https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2021/08/mandiant-discloses-critical-vulnerability-affecting-iot-devices.html