#BELKIN WEMO SWITCH HOW TO#
#BELKIN WEMO SWITCH SOFTWARE#
#BELKIN WEMO SWITCH CODE#

That means that if even you own two or three of these devices, they’ll almost certainly start out with different names so you can set them up easily.īut you’ll probably want to rename them later on so they’re easier to tell apart in future, by assigning then friendly names such as TV power, Laptop charger and Raspberry Pi server.

#BELKIN WEMO SWITCH SOFTWARE#

The problem that the researchers discovered was a good old stack buffer overflow in the part of the device software that allows you to change the so-called FriendlyName of the device – the text string that is displayed when you connect to it with an app on your phone.īy default, these devices start up with a friendly name along the lines of Wemo mini XYZ, where XYZ denotes three hexadecimal digits that we’re guessing are chosen pseudorandomly. (We’re not sure how acceptable this sort of “end of life” dismissal would be if the device turned out to have a flaw in its 120V AC or 230V AC electrical circuitry, such as the possibility of overheating and emitting noxious chemicals or setting on fire, but it seems that faults in the low-voltage digital electronics or firmware in the device can be ignored, even if they could lead to a cyberattacker flashing the mains power switch in the device on and off repeatedly at will.) When friendly names are your enemy Unfortunately, even though there are almost certainly many of these devices in active use in the real world, Belkin has apparently said that it considers the device to be “at the end of its life” and that the security hole will therefore not be patched.

#BELKIN WEMO SWITCH CODE#

In this case, the researchers found a remote code execution hole in the Wemo Mini Smart Plug back in January 2023, reported it in February 2023, and received a CVE number for it in March 2023 ( CVE-2023-27217). Internet of Things – do you really need a kettle that can boil your security dry? Think of it like a power adapter that instead of converting, say, a round Euro socket into a triangular UK one, converts, say, a manually-switched US socket into an electronically-switched US socket that can be controlled remotely via an app or a web-type interface. Simply put, there are lots of people out there who have already bought and plugged these things in, and are using them right now to control electrical outlets in their homes.Ī “smart plug”, simply put, is a power socket that you plug into an existing wall socket and that interposes a Wi-Fi-controlled switch between the mains outlet on the front of the wall socket and an identical-looking mains outlet on the front of the smart plug. his appears to be a pretty popular consumer deviceased on these numbers, it’s safe to estimate that the total sales on Amazon alone should be in the hundreds of thousands.

Our initial interest in the device came from having several of these lying around our lab and used at our homes, so we just wanted to see how safe (or not) they were to use. Old (in the short-term modern sense) though they might be, the researchers noted that:

#BELKIN WEMO SWITCH HOW TO#

The model they looked at, the Wemo Mini Smart Plug (F7C063) is apparently getting towards the end of its shelf life, but we found plenty of them for sale online, along with detailed advice and instructions on Belkin’s site on how to set them up. Researchers at IoT security company Sternum dug into a popular home automation mains plug from well-known device brand Belkin.

Belkin wemo switch