My audio interface has SSH enabled by default

by hhh • 3 months ago

331 97 3 months ago

yonatan80702• 3 months ago

Having the firmware image just be a boring old tarball + hash sounds super nice. I wish more devices were this open, and I hope Rode won't see this and decide to lock the firmware upgrades down.

EvanAnderson3• 3 months ago

In the off chance anybody from Rode sees this: This makes me want to purchase your gear. Don't change it.

It's funny this comes up now. Tomorrow I'm dragging my Zoom R20 recorder on-site to use as an overly-featured USB audio interface for a single-mic live stream. If I'd know this about Rode a week ago I'd have purchased one of these and could have left my R20 hooked-up in the home studio!

QuantumNomad_• 3 months ago

I’m guilty of using my Zoom R16 in a similar fashion; as USB audio interface most of the time for a couple of inputs.

The only thing that is a little sad about it is that for example the faders do nothing when the R16 is in USB audio interface mode.

It does however like to randomly turn on reverb and one other effect after power cycling. Which I sometimes forget and then wonder for half a second why the audio is sounding weird :P So there is some extra functionality that is available even in USB audio interface mode, although in this case not desirable for me to have enabled within it. If I want to add reverb or other effects when using the R16 as USB audio interface, I prefer to do so in the DAW. I would have liked to be able to use the faders though.

jasomill3• 3 months ago

Funny you mention that, because my first thought when reading that he submitted a report to the vendor was that they'd "fix" the problem by requiring firmware uploads to be signed (in which case it's "secure" because only their service techs have access to the private key, IOW, security by sternly worded written policy).

tombert• 3 months ago

I had to upgrade the firmware in my HP printer a couple years ago.

It’s a printer that I think was released in ~2009 (I am not able to check right now), and in order to upgrade the RAM to 256MB I needed to do a firmware update.

I dreaded this, but then I found out that all you do to update the firmware was FTP a tarball to the printer over the network. I dropped it in with FileZilla, it spent a few minutes whirring, and my firmware was updated.

Then I got mad that firmware updates are ever more complicated than that. Let me FTP or SCP or SFTP a blob there, do a checksum or something for security reasons, and then do nothing else.

thwarted• 3 months ago

I think my favorite is wifi access points that support tftp to load a firmware image (with some kind of hardware switch to enable this state). These can be made effective unbrickable and it's really nice for experimenting.

ssl-310• 3 months ago

Let me FTP or SCP or SFTP a blob there, do a checksum or something for security reasons

Whose security are we talking about here? Mine, or the manufacturer's?

jasomill3• 3 months ago

My favorite firmware update story is a time when I had to reflash firmware on an old IBM Fibre Channel/SCSI gateway because it had become corrupted and wouldn't boot.

Fortunately the first stage bootloader (which may have been in ROM) was intact, and had debugging commands that allowed reading and writing bytes of memory one at a time, and to jump to a specific memory address.

After using IDA to find the compressed firmware in the update blob and figure out how the update process worked, I was then able to use an expect script to use bootloader commands to slowly poke the firmware and the code that decompressed and copied the updated firmware to flash (extracted from the firmware itself after decompressing it with zlib) into RAM a byte at a time, then to jump to the uploaded code to finish the installation.

Worked like a charm, and enabled me to continue using the device for several years until I no longer had a use for it.

Gigachad• 3 months ago

I think it should be locked down to require some kind of physical button input to enable the commands, putting it in some kind of "DFU" mode. Otherwise anything with USB access could brick your device by flashing a bad firmware.

gamerslexus2• 3 months ago

I don't want my audio interface to run SSH (and have some random authorized key added), personally.

yonatan80702• 3 months ago

I agree that it shouldn't have SSH enabled, but I do like that the firmware isn't encrypted or signed, so it's not hard to mod it, at no cost to thr manufacturer

Geezus_42• 3 months ago

Just don't expose it on a public network?

9p• 3 months ago

why was disclosure the objective? wouldn't you want to keep this interface open?

hhh8• 3 months ago

not really an objective, I hope RODE continues to keep it open

vablings• 3 months ago

https://github.com/ThomasStolt/Copy-Recordings-Off-Rodecaste...

It used to be completely open lol

realo4• 3 months ago

I understand the hacker rationale to have fun owning the device, and i would like it to stay that way.

But... please do not forget that the CRA will put a heavy blanket on that fire.

cwillu• 3 months ago

TLA syndrome strikes again, I have no idea what CRA refers to here.

throwaway892014• 3 months ago

Cyber Resilience Act [1], which is well-intentioned, and doesn't outright forbid user access to firmware, but most vendors will take the easy road and outright block user-modifiable software (if they didn't already), so that their completely closed source, obfuscated and vulnerable version is the only version allowed on their devices.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Resilience_Act

rikafurude21• 3 months ago

Its still crazy to me that everyone has a pocket AI-hacker ready to inspect firmware and modify their devices now. You just put the agent on it and it gives you access in minutes. You would have to be a Hotz tier hacker if you wanted to do anything close to this only last year, or at the very least extremely patient for long hours.

buildbot2• 3 months ago

This 1000% - I’ve used AI to enable SSH in one Phase One digital back I own, and to reverse engineer and patch the firmware on another to make the back think it’s a different back - Credo 50 to IQ250! The internals are literally the Sam.

Almondsetat• 3 months ago

I'm sorry, are you trusting an LLM to touch a camera that costs like a new car?

hhh8• 3 months ago

its really nice to not have to spend hours looking thru packet captures and stuff, i enjoy digging but as i'm getting older I have less time to spend 16 hour days looking at random firmware blobs

strbean• 3 months ago

Damn, maybe I can throw an agent at trying to unlock IMEI spoofing on my Unifi LTE modem. That one guy on twitter who does all the LTE modem unlocking never replied to my tweet :(

throwaway892014• 3 months ago

You would have to be a Hotz tier hacker if you wanted to do anything close to this only last year

This isn't true at all. Yes, LLMs have made it dramatically easier to analyse, debug and circumvent. Both for people who didn't have the skill to do this, and for people who know how to but just cannot be bothered because it's often a grind. This specific device turned out to be barely protected against anything. No encrypted firmware, no signature checking, and built-in SSH access. This would be extremely doable for any medium skilled person without an LLM with good motivation and effort.

You're referring to George Hotz, which is known for releasing the first PS3 hypervisor exploit. The PS3 was / is fully secured against attackers, of which the mere existence of a hypervisor layer is proof of. Producing an exploit required voltage glitching on physical hardware using an FPGA [1]. Perhaps an LLM can assist with mounting such an attack, but as there's no complete feedback loop, it still would require a lot of human effort.

[1] https://rdist.root.org/2010/01/27/how-the-ps3-hypervisor-was...

dpark• 3 months ago

fully secured against attackers, of which the mere existence of a hypervisor layer is proof of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine_escape

mswphd• 3 months ago

didn't PS3 have a hardcoded nonce for their ECDSA impl that allowed full key recovery? I would agree that I doubt LLMs let people mount side-channel attacks easily on consumer electronics though.

BiraIgnacio• 3 months ago

The hacking aspect has been hit and miss for me. Just today I was trying to verify a fix for a CVE and even giving the agent the CVE description + details on how to exploit it and the code that fixed it, it couldn't write the exploit code correctly.

Not to say it's not super useful, as we can see in the article

hrimfaxi• 3 months ago

Perhaps an LLM can assist with mounting such an attack, but as there's no complete feedback loop, it still would require a lot of human effort.

LLMs have had no problem modifying software on an attached android phone. It's only a matter of time.

CursedSilicon• 3 months ago

Minor correction. At 27c3's "Console Hacking 2010" talk. Geohot's Hypervisor work is mentioned at 4:25 or so. Described as "really unreliable" and "eh whatever" due to requiring hardware modification and only granting rudimentary hypervisor access.

These were the same people that then went on to explain how they reverse-engineered the encryption keys of the PS3 to enable "fakesigned" code to be installed

rl3• 3 months ago

... but as there's no complete feedback loop, it still would require a lot of human effort.

Not for long. Picture this: a robot receives instructions on what to physically solder in order to complete the desired modification task.

However, before it can send an image back to the vision-aware LLM guiding it, the PCB lights on fire along with the robot because said LLM confidently gave the wrong instructions.

Then, the robotic fire brigade shows up and mostly walks into walls unable to navigate anywhere useful.

The future is bright.

Thaxll• 3 months ago

LLM are not capable of doing that for most things. Having an open ssh device does not require any special "skill".

throwaway173738• 3 months ago

If it’s embedded Linux with no HAB it’s not hard to make “adjustments.” Just use file and binwalk to figure out what it is and break it open.

akdev1l• 3 months ago

there’s barely any hacking here

the guy found this through looking at the firmware but nmap -p 22 would have also found this

So like the first thing you would do to attack the device

I found an issue exactly like this on an ISP-provided router. I am nowhere near geohot but also didn’t even do as much as the guy in the article lmao

hhh8• 3 months ago

to me this is just normal to do with your devices. I think it’s interesting because it has no fw signing etc and because they left ssh, not because of figuring out how to do the patching.

jasomill3• 3 months ago

From the article, it sounds like he used Claude Code as an alternative to Wireshark and Google to decode USB HID traffic and find protocol documentation, respectively.

I suppose this could save a bit of time if you don't already have Wireshark installed, with a minor risk of hallucinations.

Other than this, he used Docker for some reason* to edit ~root/.ssh/authorized_keys and /etc/shadow in the firmware tarball, then wrote a quick Python script to send the relevant HID messages and copy the modified tarball to a volume mounted from a USB drive exposed by the device in response to one of the HID messages.

Maybe he used Claude to do some of this other stuff. Who knows? But the only thing in the post or the linked scripts that wasn't immediately obvious to me is why he installed the whois package in his Ubuntu container, but it turns out that, in Debian, the mkpasswd utility is installed by the whois package for historical reasons[1].

So basically, you have to be an insane hacker, or else have a basic working knowledge of Linux system administration (or at least know how to use the man(1) command; then again Google would probably suffice as an alternative) and how to write trivial programs in any language with bindings to a USB HID library.

* Presumably because he was on a Mac and didn't have a Linux box handy to generate the hashed password (which requires using glibc crypt(3) in a way that isn't compatible with macOS libc crypt(3), so nontrivial on a Mac).

Not sure why he needed password authentication in the first place, but, at the author's request, I won't shoot him.

I will, however, point out that, unless the sshd_config file on the device already set PermitRootLogin to something other than the default "prohibit-password", password authentication wouldn't have worked to log in as root, even with PasswordAuthentication set to "yes".

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=116260

hhh8• 3 months ago

I used wireshark to capture the traffic, and looked thru the pcap for the area that looked like the updating, and gave the packet numbers and the pcap to claude code to find the details of how it worked instead of scribbling notes for an hour or two i’d guess

I’m very used to doing this stuff manually for various devices and software, but am also interested in tracking llm progress, and it seemed simple enough to get a rundown of what was happening while I did other work.

It was the first time I have messed around with hid devices though, so that was aided by claude

and yeah i’ve been bit by having to google how to get mkpasswd dozens of times over the years and used to have to do a lot of rootfs editing on a mac, so I got used to doing it in a container.

no real reason for wanting pw auth, I ended up turning it off afterwards but it’s been a bit since I wrote this

thanks for the comment!

kolinko• 3 months ago

a bit of time

A bit of time is an understatement.

I used Wireshark to analyze various things (mostly smart home) over the years, but now CC does in minutes what it would take me a few hours before - and provides dedicated, custom made panels for whatever I want.

As an example - debugging KNX magistrale in my home, previously it was either wireshark and a ton of regexes, handwritten scripts (or official software that was terrible), now you just tell CC what you want to extract, and you get beautiful real-time views of the activity.

One thing is previewing the traffic, but then CC can easily fetch docs for any device it finds on the network, if it has an API (official or not), utilize it and do whatever you want.

montecarl2• 3 months ago

I really want to know how he solved this problem, which I also face:

last year i bought a Rodecaster Duo to solve some audio woes to allow myself and my girlfriend to have microphones to our respective computers when gaming together and talking on discord in the same room without any echo

hhh8• 3 months ago

the rodecaster can connect to two computers, and we are both generally in the same discord call. so we have both microphones routed into one input for a computer, and the other person joins with their mic muted and the audio just comes from one client. since the mixing is local there's no echo. email me if you have more questions :)

donatj• 3 months ago

Why connect it to both computers?

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS3• 3 months ago

Not in the same league or form factor, but I have an old Jabra 65 headset, and the noise canceling is amazing. I can be playing my cello while unmuted on a call, and nobody can hear it.

I know headsets aren't everyone's cup of tea, but a mic close to the source (your mouth) with good noise canceling is a solid solution.

montecarl2• 3 months ago

I get it! Thank you that is genius.

nazcan• 3 months ago

So both mics will pick up both people (at least somewhat, in the same room) - but because there is no, I assume 20-100ms latency going through the system, to discord, and back - it avoids a slight difference in timing of the two mics picking up the same sound slightly differently. Is that right?

Very cool!

NikolaNovak• 3 months ago

Doesn't a headset with directional boom microphone do the trick? I may be misinterpreting the problem statement though :-).

Kaliboy• 3 months ago

I recently vibe coded a jack mixer in Rust. It can ingest and relay audio via LAN. I have around 40 ms latency, 50-60 ms if relaying via wifi.

It would solve the issue in a similar way. One pc runs the mixer. The mixer has an input channel for local mic.

Other PC broadcasts their mic to the mixer, which comes in as 'channel 2'.

You can even have music playing on your local PC, either the mixer or broadcaster creates a local sink.

It's all then mixed in the mixer, there's 3 outputs. You could say use the main out to send to discord.

And the monitor line would be used to output Discord audio, which can then be relayed to the other PC for realtime listening.

coldcity_again• 3 months ago

Nice writeup and great domain. I don't know Zola and don't know if this is a common template or a custom jobbie but it's lovely.

bewuethr• 3 months ago

Looks like the https://www.getzola.org/themes/radion/ theme

userbinator• 3 months ago

I think "my audio interface is a 64-bit Linux computer" would've sounded far more interesting to me as a title. Perhaps a decade or two ago, the functionality of that device would've likely been implemented on a small 16-bit or 32-bit SoC running an RTOS like VxWorks.

Given how many physical controls it has, turning it into a game console seems like a logical next step.

ssl-310• 3 months ago

My audio interface is a Linux computer with FPGAs inside (that actually get field-programmed), with two gigabit Ethernet jacks that each talk to different parts of the machine.

But I don't think anyone here would care about that. It's not such an unusual arrangement. I guess it's kind of impressive to use it on my desk at home, but in pro audio world it's actually kind of mundane.

Maybe I'll write about it more after I get the gumption to gain a root shell on it (or brick it, whichever comes first). I think you guys might find that part more interesting. :)

lukeh3• 3 months ago

I’m building an audio device. It runs Linux for the control plane (it’s just a CM4 running Yocto, maybe I’ll leave SSH running on production units, maybe not, haven’t decided yet). No audio passes through the CM4, there’s a dedicated FPGA and MCU for that. It’s been a fun project, first time hardware for me, feel free to ask my anything!

pjc502• 3 months ago

I have some of those at work: they're test platforms for the audio ICs, for things like SoundWire interfaces.

dlcarrier3• 3 months ago

And your video dongle might be a Unix computer: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/02/04/doom-apple-lightning-hd...

extraduder_ire• 3 months ago

Current ram/storage squeeze aside, chips are cheap. Cheap as chips.

Hard to beat the cost and compatibility of linux too.

mianos• 3 months ago

Good old local Aussie guys write this. If you had something you wanted to report I'd just give them a call. We almost speak English down here.

rurban• 3 months ago

It's a Sydney company. But parts are now manifactured in China. So who added this backdoor to listen to its customers? The CIA has similar companies doing it over popular loudspeakers. Could also be the Chinese.

tosti• 3 months ago

It runs jack audio. This thing is literally jack in the box!

ZihangZ2• 3 months ago

Yeah, this is pretty common once a device has any real DSP in it. There's usually some stripped-down Linux on an ARM SoC underneath, and the vendor BSP just happens to ship with sshd on.

Not necessarily malice, more like nobody on the audio side really owns the rootfs.

The big question is whether it's only listening on the USB-side network, or on the actual LAN. First one is annoying. Second one would actually bother me.

hhh8• 3 months ago

It is listening on the LAN. It connects over wifi only when you use certain features, so i didn’t test if that interface is listening as well.

ZihangZ2• 3 months ago

Yeah, LAN is the line for me. USB-side sshd is a weird dev leftover; LAN means it’s now in the home threat model.

surajrmal• 3 months ago

Linux defaults are unfortunately not great for production of devices of this nature. By comparison, android ships with 3 default image types, eng, userdebug, and user. By creating this system of preconfigured defaults, it makes it easy to avoid this sort of mistake.

uwagar• 3 months ago

is he happy that rode has an ssh to his device? the guy is like too nice. where's the outrage?

hhh8• 3 months ago

I would like for SSH to be turned off, but I also like that I can just do that myself.

Normally when I look at these devices firmware they’re horrific beasts with insane issues everywhere. This just requires a config change to fix the single thing I don’t like about it. There’s plenty of outrage in the world :)

dlcarrier3• 3 months ago

Hacker News doesn't know what to do with anyone that doesn't think the world is ending and that humanity is inherently evil and must be punished.

It's still better than Reddit, though.

Roark66• 3 months ago

I think many vendors think security is synonymous with "hard to clone". This us why they require signed images and so on.

hoopla_ching2• 3 months ago

The thing I always come back to with this stuff is that "signed firmware" and "open firmware" aren't actually opposites, they just get treated that way. Ship it with verification on by default, fine, but let the owner enroll their own key (or flip a jumper, or hold a button on boot, whatever). Basically nobody does this outside of a couple of Chromebooks and some networking gear, so every conversation about firmware security ends up being a fight between "lock it down" and "leave it wide open" instead of "let the person who paid for the hardware decide."

Rode shipping a tarball + hash is great. Just hoping that if they ever do tighten it up, they tighten it in a way that still lets me put whatever I want on a thing I own.

miki123211• 3 months ago

I've said this dozens of times on here, but IMHO the correct solution to this problem is:

1. Allow the user to choose between developer control and owner control, but only at first setup / after a factory reset. This prevents somebody with physical access from easily and covertly installing a backdoor.

2. Have a scary screen on boot announcing that "your device has been hacked", bypassable via a secret combination that isn't displayed on the screen. This isn't a problem for anybody who roots the device themselves, but instantly gives the game away if a third-party messes with it.

hoopla_ching2• 3 months ago

I like this. The factory-reset gate stops the attack without locking owners out, and the boot warning is basically what Android does with unlocked bootloaders.

nike-17• 3 months ago

[flagged]

My audio interface has SSH enabled by default

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