Smart Air Fryer Vulnerable to Dangerous RCE Vulnerabilities, Researchers Find

Security researchers have identified a couple of vulnerabilities in an IoT device that might seem so innocuous that it’s not even regarded as part of a smart home, an Air Fryer.

We all live in smart homes, but we don’t realize it. People still wait to see when they’re going to live in homes that talk back to them, thinking that’s the threshold. The truth is that smart homes are already here, in full force. They might not be able to talk back, but it’s more than enough for attackers to compromise an air fryer.

Like all IoT devices, the Cosori Smart Air Fryer is always connected to the Internet. In this case, it’s through a Wi-Fi connection so people can interact with the device and issue commands. While it sounds great in theory, a successful attack can be hazardous.

“TALOS-2020-1216 (CVE-2020-28592) and TALOS-2020-1217 (CVE-2020-28593) are remote code execution vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to remotely inject code into the device,” said the CISCO researchers. “This could hypothetically allow an adversary to change temperatures, cooking times and settings on the air fryer, or start it without the user’s knowledge. The adversary must have physical access to the air fryer for some of these vulnerabilities to work.”

While you might think that’s not too bad since some of the attacks require physical access, but it turns out that CISCO decided to publish the data because the manufacturer didn’t issue a fix. CISCO follows the 90-day responsible disclosure policy, and it turns out that the vendor didn’t even respond to their requests.

According to the researchers, the Cosori Smart 5.8-Quart Air Fryer CS158-AF version 1.1.0 is vulnerable to these exploits. Moreover, the problem is now even worse since the researchers published details to determine COSORI to patch the devices faster. That also means that potential attackers also know about the vulnerabilities.