Hacking Nokia mesh router: From UART to CGI command injection and password generator. 📻🗝️👨🏻💻☕🥯
Hardware security expert - and author of a great book - Eugene Lim, in a blog post two weeks ago, shared one of his research projects: this time, the Nokia Beacon 1 mesh router. He performed a full hardware-and-firmware audit - by the book!
As a result, at least ten notable security issues were found, along with some practical ways to protect the device at the firmware level.
For example, the router’s UART password isn’t universal - it’s derived from the device’s serial number and keyed data, so each device has a unique VTY password. That’s a smart design; I’d love to see more protections like it.
More details:
Hacking the Nokia Beacon 1 Router: UART, Command Injection, and Password Generation with Qiling [Blog]: https://spaceraccoon.dev/nokia-beacon-router-uart-command-injection/
This is excellent hardware security research. The device-specific UART password generation based on serial numbers is indeed a smart approach that more manufacturers should adopt. It's refreshing to see practical security mitigations at the firmware level. The discovery of ten security issues highlights how crucial thorough hardware-firmware audits are, especially for network-facing devices. Eugene Lim's methodical aproach here demonstrates the value of comprehensive security assessments beyond just software testing.
This is exactly the kind of thorough hardware security analysis we need more of! The fact that Nokia implemented device-specific UART passwords based on serial numbers shows they were thinking about security from the ground up. It's refreshing to see a manufacurer actually put effort into protecting against physical access attacks, even if vulnerabilities were still found. Eugene's methodical approach—from hardware teardown to firmware analysis—is a great example of how to properly audit IoT devices. These routers are in millions of homes, so understanding their attack surface is critical.