• Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
MUST READ

China-linked group Houken hit French organizations using zero-days

 | 

Cybercriminals Target Brazil: 248,725 Exposed in CIEE One Data Breach

 | 

Europol shuts down Archetyp Market, longest-running dark web drug marketplace

 | 

Kelly Benefits data breach has impacted 550,000 people, and the situation continues to worsen as the investigation progresses

 | 

Cisco removed the backdoor account from its Unified Communications Manager

 | 

U.S. Sanctions Russia's Aeza Group for aiding crooks with bulletproof hosting

 | 

Qantas confirms customer data breach amid Scattered Spider attacks

 | 

CVE-2025-6554 is the fourth Chrome zero-day patched by Google in 2025

 | 

U.S. CISA adds TeleMessage TM SGNL flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 

A sophisticated cyberattack hit the International Criminal Court

 | 

Esse Health data breach impacted 263,000 individuals

 | 

Europol dismantles €460M crypto scam targeting 5,000 victims worldwide

 | 

CISA and U.S. Agencies warn of ongoing Iranian cyber threats to critical infrastructure

 | 

U.S. CISA adds Citrix NetScaler flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 

Canada bans Hikvision over national security concerns

 | 

Denmark moves to protect personal identity from deepfakes with new copyright law

 | 

Ahold Delhaize data breach affected over 2.2 Million individuals

 | 

Facebook wants access to your camera roll for AI photo edits

 | 

SECURITY AFFAIRS MALWARE NEWSLETTER ROUND 51

 | 

Security Affairs newsletter Round 530 by Pierluigi Paganini – INTERNATIONAL EDITION

 | 
  • Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
  • Home
  • Breaking News
  • Hacking
  • [Full-Disclosure] HideezKey 2 FAIL: How a good idea turns into a SPF (Security Product Failure)

[Full-Disclosure] HideezKey 2 FAIL: How a good idea turns into a SPF (Security Product Failure)

Pierluigi Paganini May 07, 2021

HideezKey- This is a deep-dive into a nice concept for a security token & password manager that turned into a horrible product due to lack of proper R&D and Threat Modeling.

Prologue: After my first success in bypassing APPROTECT readout protection of the NRF52-based Slok smartlock with #PocketGlitcher (i.e. video below), I started looking around for more interesting and concerning (from a security point of view) NRF52-based products.

And here it comes the #HideezKey 2!

To give you a quick overview of this piece of hardware, check out their video intro:

Now that you got the point of this product. You will agree with me that the concept is very interesting, let’s now see if its implementation into a real product matches the expectations.

I will divide my investigation in paragraphs to keep everything as linear as possible.

Passive Recon & OSINT:

First of all (even without attempting to open the token) we can immediately notice our best-hardware-hacking-friend: the FCC ID. In this case: 2AQ5UHIDEEZKEY2

This leads us to the first set of OSINT information regarding how the PCB looks like, what MCU is used and which frequency is in use by the DUT (Device Under Test).

The Internal Photos PDF from the FCC database is particularly useful in case the DUT’s PCB would have been buried under a hard layer of epoxy. This would have helped us to plan in advance where to start scraping out the epoxy and how to approach the opening of the case and how to reach the MCU. Luckily for us, there was none of these anti-tampering measures in place.

Overall, most of the information gathered so far is matching Hideez’ manual specs.

While keeping looking around the cyberspace for more information about the DUT, I quickly discovered a funny thing: there is a repo on Github that contains a lot of juicy stuff! 🍬🍭🧁🍰

gif

Among them… the schematics, the BoM (Bill of Material) and even the goddam CAD files of the PCB!

In practice, I had access to everything I needed to easily figure out where the NRF52’s SWD pins are located, without even messing with Microscope, GIMP and Multimeter in continuity mode. (Thanks Hideez ❤)

Looking closer with Altium on the CAD files, I easily figured out the SWD’s pinout:

Note, at this point in time I was also looking for an better location where to probe the DEC1 and RESET pins coming out from the NRF52 in order to use them later on to conduct the Fault Injection Attack with my #PocketGlitcher:

Even though, at the end, I won’t even need them. 🙃

Conclusion, always do your homework before putting your hands on the target: FCC database, Google, and Chinese search engines are your best friend when doing a hardware hacking research!

Setting Up The Device: Before starting the Active Recon Phase and, in order to replicate a real scenario, I decided to install the Hideez App on both laptop and iPhone. Subsequently I filled it with a bunch of dummy credentials. This will help me later in the case I will be able to obtain a firmware that eventually is encrypted (i.e. known-plaintext attack).

Active Recon:

Now that we have a working Hideez Key 2 with some passwords in it, when can start opening it and checking if what we found during the Recon Phase matches the reality.

As expected, from a closer look with my microscope, the PCB looks matching the schematics and the CAD design. Cool!

Just to be 100% sure I won’t fry the board while attempting the firmware dump, I double-checked with the multimeter that the pinout of the SWD interface was still correct. And indeed it was!

Dumping Firmware over SWD Interface:

In order to prove how easy would be for a real threat actor to dump the firmware in couple of minutes (i.e. #evilmaid attack) without leaving traces on the PCB itself, I decided to use my PCB workstation with nano probes.

With everything properly setup and connected to my J-link debugger, it literally took (with my extreme surprise, considering is a security token used as 2FA & password manager) 60 seconds to dump the firmware! 😱😱😱

Firmware Analysis:

Passed the initial shock, I thought the data inside the dump would have been still encrypted in some way. Therefore I was mentally prepared to play with #CyberChef‘s features in order to crack the sh*t out if this security token.

Well… I was wrong.

The credentials, both existing and also the ones that were “deleted” by the user, are there! In PLAINTEXT.

Everything! The Cloud Password that allows to login on Hideez’s website, Laptop’s credentials, Website login user and password are ALL IN PLAINTEXT!

At this point, I will let the good-old Arny express my feelings.

gif

RFID Feature:

One clue still left (from a hardware security POV) was about the RFID tag. From the opening of the case, it was visibly obvious that the RFID feature advertised by Hideez was not related to the NRF52, but was rather just a standalone re-writable tag. (meh…)

That’s kind-of pity since the NRF52 is supposed to support NFC protocol as you can see from the Nordic’s NRF52-DK prototyping/evaluation board.

Anyway, long-story-short, I wanted to check with my Proxmark what tag is that: it appears being a classic T55xx re-writable tag.

Sadly, this tag, as all the 125KHz vulnerable ones like EM4xxx or HID Proxcard, etc… are quite easy to clone from distance with a weaponized long-range reader (see below couple of examples).

Security Remarks:

The lack of proper security R&D and Threat Modeling is obviously the root-cause of this product failure. In particular I would have spent more time looking for:

  • A proper MCU with a security enclave that makes harder for anyone to extract the firmware (i.e. glitching-resistant). And I would enable the readout protection!
  • A better case design in order to still allow battery replacement but avoid full access to the PCB. With of course, an active anti-tamper detection mechanism that will void the encrypted content.
  • An eventual level of encryption on the top of the security enclave in order to slow-down eventual threat actors with unlimited access time to the stolen token.

Considering I didn’t have time yet to dig into the mobile app, APIs endpoint and BLE communication protocol, I can’t say exactly what could have been improved there. Though, I would definitely not forget doing a proper threat modeling in there too. 😉

Future Work:

Finally, the investigation is not over, there are some aspects of this DUT that I’d like to check out (time permitting):

  • APK Static Reverse Engineering

Hunting for usual hardcoded keys, backdoors, hidden APIs endpoints, etc.

  • APIs Endpoint Testing

Through Certificate Pinning Bypass and MiTM Traffic Analysis

  • BLE Protocol Analysis

Through both Passive and MiTM attacks

Therefore, stay tuned and follow:

Author Biography:Luca Bongiorni is working as Head of Offensive Security. He is also actively involved in InfoSec where his main fields of research are: Radio Networks, Reverse Engineering, Hardware Hacking, Internet of Things, and Physical Security. He also loves to share his knowledge and present some cool projects at security conferences around the globe.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook

[adrotate banner=”9″][adrotate banner=”12″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, HideezKey)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]


facebook linkedin twitter

Hacking HideezKey

you might also like

Pierluigi Paganini July 03, 2025
China-linked group Houken hit French organizations using zero-days
Read more
Pierluigi Paganini July 03, 2025
Cybercriminals Target Brazil: 248,725 Exposed in CIEE One Data Breach
Read more

leave a comment

newsletter

Subscribe to my email list and stay
up-to-date!

    recent articles

    China-linked group Houken hit French organizations using zero-days

    APT / July 03, 2025

    Cybercriminals Target Brazil: 248,725 Exposed in CIEE One Data Breach

    Data Breach / July 03, 2025

    Europol shuts down Archetyp Market, longest-running dark web drug marketplace

    Cyber Crime / July 03, 2025

    Kelly Benefits data breach has impacted 550,000 people, and the situation continues to worsen as the investigation progresses

    Uncategorized / July 03, 2025

    Cisco removed the backdoor account from its Unified Communications Manager

    Security / July 02, 2025

    To contact me write an email to:

    Pierluigi Paganini :
    pierluigi.paganini@securityaffairs.co

    LEARN MORE

    QUICK LINKS

    • Home
    • Cyber Crime
    • Cyber warfare
    • APT
    • Data Breach
    • Deep Web
    • Digital ID
    • Hacking
    • Hacktivism
    • Intelligence
    • Internet of Things
    • Laws and regulations
    • Malware
    • Mobile
    • Reports
    • Security
    • Social Networks
    • Terrorism
    • ICS-SCADA
    • POLICIES
    • Contact me

    Copyright@securityaffairs 2024

    We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
    Cookie SettingsAccept All
    Manage consent

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities...
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    Non-necessary
    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
    SAVE & ACCEPT