Zigbee hacking

Hence, ZigBee is an open global wireless standard designed to address the unique needs of intelligent device-to-device communication. It allows a great diversity of smart home applications to connect to the Internet e. Compared to other wireless standards, ZigBee seems to be the best option for smart home:.

The complete ZigBee protocol stack:. ZigBee is based on either a star or a mesh topology. The mesh topology expands the reach of networks and eliminates single points of failure. Some experts deem that its reliability increases with its growth — the more devices are connected, the better. Overall, the creators of ZigBee made it secure, but there is enough evidence pointing to the contrary. Factors like low-cost units, usability and compatibility take precedence over implementing security, at least that is the opinion of several security researchers.

This article presents some of the breakthrough findings concerning the security of ZigBee networks. Making ZigBee standard hack-proof is necessary to ensure secure networks, frame security, key transport and establishment. Cryptographic protection is on when different devices in the ZigBee network communicate with each other. Therefore, it is imperative encryption keys to be properly secured at all times. There are two types of security keys:. The security of ZigBee networks hinges on the presupposition that keys are securely stored and devices have the symmetric keys pre-installed so that they will not be transmitted in an unencrypted form.

Nevertheless, making an exception to the general rule is how strongholds are seized — in this case, when a new and non-preconfigured device enters the network, then a single, unprotected key will likely be sent to allow for encrypted communication. Thus safekeeping the encryption keys, which is critical, will put the security of the entire network at risk.

Another way to penetrate ZigBee networks is physically accessing some types of smart home devices such as temperature sensors and light switches.

Due to their low cost and limited capabilities, it is assumed that their hardware is not tamper-resistant, which in turn might be just enough for the attacker to lay his hands on privileged information. ZigBee and the A direct physical interaction may prove detrimental to the integrity of the targeted ZigBee network.

In fact, many radios residing on this network employ a hard-coded encryption key loaded in the RAM memory once the device is powered.

Being distributed, flashed, on all of the devices in a ZigBee network, the probability of replacing the keys is very low. Armed with this knowledge, hackers can resort to setting up special serial interfaces on the ZigBee device in order to intercept the encryption keys moved from flash to RAM during power up. Remote attacks aiming to snatch encryption keys are possible due to methodologies known as Over the Air OTA key delivery and pre-shared keying immanent to ZigBee.

OTA is typically applied to more sophisticated ZigBee networks to ensure better security and updating. Its security protection can be circumvented with a device that mimics a ZigBee node and picks the transmissions exchanged among internal devices; these packets can be analyzed or decrypted later on. An attack of this kind will be almost impossible to detect.

KillerBee is a toolset, combining hardware and software, which will effectively intercept and analyze Remote attacks also distinguish themselves with high stealthiness, and the intruder can even extend the range of coverage by creating high-powered transmitters or special Yagi antennas.

ZigBee units are particularly vulnerable to these attacks, since they are equipped with a lightweight design of the protocol with weak replay protection. Hence, captured packets from ZigBee nodes are sent back in a replay attack scenario to make it look that they come from the originating node. The minimal session checking by the ZigBee units will not suffice to uncover the ruse, and the network will treat the traffic as if it arrives from a valid node More on replay attacks on ZigBee networks here.

Application profiles is a unified functionality of ZigBee devices manufactured by different vendors that enables all these various devices to communicate.

All certified devices from each manufacturer should be able to use the standard interface and operability of this profile, but the key moment here is when an unconfigured device joins the ZigBee network for a first time. Now that we have all the parameters entered, as soon as we hit the start capture button, it will start saving all the traffic up to packets count in our case to the Output file. In our case, after pressing the Start Capture button, we will use the mobile application to switch on and off the bulb, change colors and perform other actions.

We then stop the capture, and the sniffed packets would be dumped in the IoTbulb. Now that we have successfully captured the packets while performing actions using the mobile application, we can replay the packets to perform what is called as a Replay attack. All captured files get stored in the pcap directory in the Attify Zigbee Framework parent folder.

The zbreplay menu allows you to choose from a list of pcap files present in the pcap directory. Go ahead and select the pcap file that we captured in the previous step, select the appropriate channel, and pick a timing delay for the replay.

Once all that is configured, hit the replay button to start replaying the packets. As this is done, you will see the bulb performing the same actions as it was asked to do during the packet capture phase. In our case, this action was changing colors as you can see from the video below.

As a note — In this case, the IoT device has no protection against replay attacks, which makes our attacks feasible. Subscribe to stay updated. Feel free to register issues on the GitHub repository in case you find bugs or have any feature requests.

You can also support us and learn IoT exploitation at the same time by taking one of our IoT Exploitation learning kits shown below. A USB dongle to interface with the protocol was configured for his existing Raspberry Pi automation controller, while an ESP served as the real-world sensor by connecting it to reed switches installed in the closet doors.

The lights turn on when the door opens, and off again once it closes. Check out this hack in action after the break. Ars Technica reports that after investigation it appears that some of the devices may connect to a standard Zigbee hub after a factory reset, but many others will definitely not.

As you might expect, users were less than thrilled. Especially those that shelled out thousands of dollars on sensors and cameras. People who were subscribed to updates on the Alexa Connect Kit ACK would recently have received an email informing that this kit is now available for sale. Over a year a later it seems that we can now finally get our grubby mitts on this kit that should enable us to make any of our projects Alexa-enabled. One of the ways to treat this condition is to expose yourself to bright light in the morning, which can help you wake up and feel more refreshed.

The first decision [Edward] had to make was what kind of light he wanted. Classic light therapy devices, often used to treat Seasonal Affective Disorder SAD , tend to be full spectrum lights that try and simulate sunlight. But in his research, he found a paper from Nature that explained the melanopsin in the human eye responds primarily to blue and green light.