Below is a video of the Oligo researchers demonstrating their AirBorne hacking technique to take over an AirPlay-enabled Bose speaker to show their company’s logo for AirBorne. (The researchers say they didn’t intend to single out Bose, but just happened to have one of the company’s speakers on hand for testing.) Bose did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
The AirBorne vulnerabilities Oligo found also affect CarPlay, the radio protocol used to connect to vehicles’ dashboard interfaces. Oligo warns that this means hackers could hijack a car’s automotive computer, known as its head unit, in any of more than 800 CarPlay-enabled car and truck models. In those car-specific cases, though, the AirBorne vulnerabilities could only be exploited if the hacker is able to pair their own device with the head unit via Bluetooth or a USB connection, which drastically restricts the threat of CarPlay-based vehicle hacking.
The AirPlay SDK flaws in home media devices, by contrast, may present a more practical vulnerability for hackers seeking to hide on a network, whether to install ransomware or carry out stealthy espionage, all while hiding on devices that are often forgotten by both consumers and corporate or government network defenders. “The amount of devices that were vulnerable to these issues, that’s what alarms me,” says Oligo researcher Uri Katz. “When was the last time you updated your speaker?”
The researchers originally started thinking about this property of AirPlay, and ultimately discovered the AirBorne vulnerabilities, while working on a different project analyzing vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to access internal services running on a target’s local network from a malicious website. In that earlier research, Oligo’s hackers found they could defeat the fundamental protections baked into every web browser that are meant to prevent websites from having this type of invasive access on other people’s internal networks.
While playing around with their discovery, the researchers realized that one of the services they could access by exploiting the bugs without authorization on a target’s systems was AirPlay. The crop of AirBorne vulnerabilities revealed today is unconnected to the previous work, but was inspired by AirPlay’s properties as a service built to sit open and at the ready for new connections.
And the fact that the researchers found flaws in the AirPlay SDK means that vulnerabilities are lurking in hundreds of models of devices—and possibly more, given that some manufacturers incorporate the AirPlay SDK without notifying Apple and becoming “certified” AirPlay devices.
“When third-party manufacturers integrate Apple technologies like AirPlay via an SDK, obviously Apple no longer has direct control over the hardware or the patching process,” says Patrick Wardle, CEO of the Apple device-focused security firm DoubleYou. “As a result, when vulnerabilities arise and third-party vendors fail to update their products promptly—or at all—it not only puts users at risk but could also erode trust in the broader Apple ecosystem.”
Updated 10 am ET, April 29, 2024: Clarified that the logo in Oligo’s video is for AirBorne, not the company itself.
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