Hacking

20 Million Google Home and Amazon Echo devices are affected by the Blueborne flaws

Millions of AI-based voice-activated personal assistants, including Google Home and Amazon Echo, are affected by the Blueborne flaws.

A series of recently disclosed critical Bluetooth flaws that affect billions of Android, iOS, Windows and Linux devices have now been discovered in
Millions of AI-based voice-activated personal assistants, including Google Home and Amazon Echo, are affected by the recently discovered Blueborne vulnerabilities.
The recently discovered BlueBorne attack technique was devised by experts with Armis Labs. Researchers discovered a total of eight vulnerabilities in the Bluetooth design that expose devices to cyber attacks.
Billions of mobile, desktop and IoT devices that use Bluetooth may be exposed to a new remote attack, even without any user interaction and pairing. The unique condition for BlueBorne attacks is that targeted devices must have Bluetooth enabled.

Once an attacker compromises a Bluetooth-enabled device, he can infect any other device on the same network.

The IoT security firm Armis now reported that an estimated 15 million Amazon Echo and 5 million Google Home devices are vulnerable to BlueBorne attack.

“Following the disclosure of the BlueBorne attack vector this past September, Armis discovered that critical Bluetooth vulnerabilities impact the Amazon Echo and Google Home. These new IoT voice-activated Personal Assistants join the extensive list of affected devices.” reads the blog post published by Armis.

“Personal Assistants are rapidly expanding throughout the home and workplace, with an estimated 15 million Amazon Echo and 5 million Google Home devices sold. Since these devices are unmanaged and closed sourced, users are unaware of the fact their Bluetooth implementation is based on potentially vulnerable code borrowed from Linux and Android.”

The Amazon Echo devices are affected by the following two vulnerabilities:
  • Remote code execution vulnerability in the Linux Kernel (CVE-2017-1000251)
  • Information leak vulnerability in the SDP Server (CVE-2017-1000250)

The researchers highlighted that other Echo devices running Linux or Android operating systems are affected by other Blueborne vulnerabilities.

Google Home devices are affected only by the CVE-2017-0785 vulnerability that is an information disclosure flaw in Android’s Bluetooth stack.

The voice-activated personal assistants are constantly listening to Bluetooth communications, an attacker within the range of the vulnerable IoT device can easily hack them.

“These devices are constantly listening to Bluetooth communications. There is no way to put an agent/antivirus on these devices. And given their limited UI, there is no way to turn their Bluetooth off” continues the blog post.

Experts from Armis published a video proof-of-concept (PoC) to show how to hack an Amazon Echo device.

Armis reported the issues to both Amazon and Google that have released patches and issued automatic updates for the affected problems.

Amazon Echo users can check that their devices are using a version that is newer than v591448720.

“The Amazon Echo and Google Home are the better examples as they were patched, and did not need user interaction to update. However, the vast bulk of IoT devices cannot be updated. However, even the Echos and the Homes will eventually be replaced by new hardware versions (as Amazon and Google recently announced), and eventually the old generations will not receive updates – potentially leaving  them susceptible to attacks indefinitely.” concluded Armis.

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

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Bluetooth hacking, BlueBorne attack)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.

Published by
Pierluigi Paganini
8 years ago

Recent Posts

Fintech firm Figure disclosed data breach after employee phishing attack

Fintech firm Figure confirmed a data breach after hackers used social engineering to trick an…

16 hours ago

U.S. CISA adds a flaw in BeyondTrust RS and PRA to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) adds a flaw in BeyondTrust RS and…

17 hours ago

Suspected Russian hackers deploy CANFAIL malware against Ukraine

A new alleged Russia-linked APT group targeted Ukrainian defense, government, and energy groups, with CANFAIL…

22 hours ago

New threat actor UAT-9921 deploys VoidLink against enterprise sectors

A new threat actor, UAT-9921, uses the modular VoidLink framework to target technology and financial…

1 day ago

Attackers exploit BeyondTrust CVE-2026-1731 within hours of PoC release

Attackers quickly targeted BeyondTrust flaw CVE-2026-1731 after a PoC was released, enabling unauthenticated remote code…

2 days ago

Google: state-backed hackers exploit Gemini AI for cyber recon and attacks

Google says nation-state actors used Gemini AI for reconnaissance and attack support in cyber operations.…

2 days ago

This website uses cookies.