Philipp Promeuschel is a security analyst at Compass Security Schweiz AG, interested in mobile and IoT security. Additionally, he is a security course teacher (APT, mobile security, forensics, web application security) and volunteering for public IT Security events such as Cyber Security Austria 2013, Cyber Security Alpen Cup 2014, OWASP AppSec EU 2013, 2015-2017 as well as for the European Cyber Security Challenge 2015.

Attacking Mongoose OS on Xtensa platforms

Mongoose OS, an open source operating system and framework for the rapid deployment of IoT projects is built on top of FreeRTOS and was initially released in 2015. Abusing buffer overflows, and other vulnerabilities, one could potentially attack implementations of Mongoose OS. In this talk, the issue under scrutiny is the security mechanisms integrated with the Mongoose OS on Xtensa platform systems. Our approach outlines first steps into exploitation techniques tailored to this special target environment. This talk aims at describing employed technologies, techniques, and the preliminary results, as well as considerations on the attack surfaces from OS to hardware and storage level. It also tries to encourage more research and tool development on this topic. We further aim to share knowledge about the exploitation of new platforms and the approaches taken. Further interpretation shows that overlooked security best practices from the past can again be exploited by future adversaries, and need to be guarded against in IoT environments.

Presentation’s Co-Presenter is Carel van Rooyen, Computer Systems Engineer.