In such a system, the ESP32 fully trusts the host. If an attacker maliciously gains control over the host system, they could potentially issue these debug commands to influence ESP32’s behavior. However, an attacker must first compromise the host device, making this a second-stage attack vector rather than a standalone vulnerability. Or, gain a physical access to the device to send the HCI commands over serial interface.

Does this even count as backdoor? Not really if you have to have access to the device in the first place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndM369oJ0tk

Why do kill switches when you can just hog all the work of maintaining some critical part of the infrastructure and make it’s functioning and maintenance so opaque and impenetrable that the employer can’t replace or fire you without their shit catching fire soon after. It doesn’t have to be malicious or illegal.

https://youtu.be/0jK0ytvjv-E

His efforts to sabotage their network began that year, and by the next year, he had planted different forms of malicious code, creating “infinite loops” that deleted coworker profile files, preventing legitimate logins and causing system crashes

I wish this guy was were actually politically motivated, but he seems to have been just really petty minded person.

This leak is really scetchy, tbh. If it’s real then it’s probably happening because of the HarmonyOS NEXT that came out late last year. With that they basically dropped the previously used custom android/linux kernel for their own totally own proprietary HarmonyOS kernel. However with that they also lost support for android and linux code sideloading in the process and replaced it with some linux translation layer.

I always thought that HarmonyOS was meant to be more of a Android replacement that also had it’s place in stuff like TVs, cars, IoT and smart devices, but they still tried PCs with it, but it was more like chromebook-like toy computer for web browsing and text editing than a full pc. It seemed like a competent product android and android smart device replacement, but I never saw it as a serious competitor for Windows, MacOS or Linux desktop. If them plan is just be self sufficient and ditch US code, then you can do more in the linux ecosystem and get more app support right out of the gate and not have to ask everybody to rewrite their code for your custom OS. With linux-laptops they will have global markets for their computers, when as Harmony OS and it’s still are best in China’s own ‘software lagoon’ where third parties care more about developing for Huawei app store.