A market-leading garage door controller is so riddled with severe security and privacy vulnerabilities that the researcher who discovered them, Sam Sabetan, is advising anyone using one to immediately disconnect it until they are fixed.
Each $80 device, used to open and close garage doors and control home security alarms and smart power plugs, employs the same easy-to-find universal password to communicate with Nexx servers. The controllers also broadcast the unencrypted email address, device ID, first name, and last initial corresponding to each one, along with the message required to open or shut a door or turn on or off a smart plug or schedule such a command for a later time.
Immediately unplug all Nexx devices
The result: Anyone with a moderate technical background can search Nexx servers for a given email address, device ID, or name and then issue commands to the associated controller. (Nexx controllers for home security alarms are susceptible to a similar class of vulnerabilities.) Commands allow a door to be opened, a device connected to a smart plug to be turned off, or an alarm to be disarmed. Worse still, over the past three months, personnel for Texas-based Nexx haven’t responded to multiple private messages warning of the vulnerabilities.
“Nexx has consistently ignored communication attempts from myself, the Department of Homeland Security, and the media,” Sabetan wrote in a post published on Tuesday. “Device owners should immediately unplug all Nexx devices and create support tickets with the company requesting them to remediate the issue.”
Sabetan estimates that more than 40,000 devices, located in residential and commercial properties, are impacted, and more than 20,000 individuals have active Nexx accounts.
Nexx controllers allow people to use their phones or voice assistants to open and close their garage doors, either on command or at scheduled times of the day. The devices can also be used to control home security alarms and smart plugs that are for remotely turning on or off appliances. The hub of this system is servers operated by Nexx, which both the phone or voice assistant and garage door opener connect to. The five-step process for enrolling a new device looks like this: