Gigaset Elements GmbH shut down their services at around 10pm CET on Friday, March 29th, 2024. As things are looking now, we can only continue with what we can extract from our devices.

On March, 25th, 2024 - with a period for action of just four days - customers of Gigaset Elements got informed that the cloud service would be shut down on March 29th due to insolvency of the company.

This project aims to collect as much data as possible while the service is still active and then - eventually - provide a service that can be self-hosted on-prem or in the cloud.

• This security report (in German) documents a bunch of findings in the Gigaset Elements implementation. AFAICS, all of them had been fixed. In particular, I was unable to downgrade from TLSv1.2 to a prior protocol version or force the server to accept weak(er) ciphers.
• The security report also mentions that update tarballs got downloaded from a server unencrypted via HTTP. The Wireshark dump that I ran for the final ~24h did not record connection attempts apart from the long- lived connection to api-bs.gigaset-elements.de:443 (78.137.103.62).
• As a consequence, I did not know where to download update tarballs from and thus could not fetch them. I also don't know the latest firmware version. It has to be newer than 29 (mentioned in the security report).

• The row of five large test pads (see osmocom) is accessible from the outside as soon as you open the lid on the back.
• To open the case and access the PCB you need to unhinge six plastic hooks that firmly hold the front and the back. I was only able to do this with a bunch of slotted screwdrivers and brute force at the expense of scratching the plastic (of hardware that is bricked anyway as things are looking right now).

This script scrapes all archives from the iframe that is embedded at gigaset.com/opensource that is mentioned in the license agreements that come with Gigaset products.

You'll need approx. 35GiB for all archives. The script creates three files named checksums.sha{1,256,512} which are also part of this repository. The more mirrors we create, the more trust anchors there are. To verify, use

sha512sum -c checksums.sha512

• osmocom provides a good starting point for the hardware. Unfortunately, they do not mention the exact download URL but it appears to be either bl17 and/or bl26
  • Whenever sourcecode/tarball is mentioned, it refers to these archives which are from 2013-10-18 and 2013-10-31.
• Comparing the output from the serial console (final snippet on the osmocom page), there are a couple of keywords that I could not find in either of the source tarballs:
  • rxdect452
  • rtxdectstack
  • jbusserver
  • ...
• There is a file src/init_rootfs/etc/init.d/S60private.sh which would execute /mnt/data/private.sh if it exists
  • a private.sh
• conclusion: it is important to create a proper dump of the existing firmware image and/or copy the files before wiping anything
• cr16 is a CPU of the CompactRISC family
  • there does not appear to be a Qemu emulation for that
• see search results for bflt executable
• use mitmproxy (documentation to
  • sniff the communication between the base station and the cloud service
  • sniff the comminucation between the app and the cloud service (less important because of gigaset-elements-api)
• Which tarballs are required for
  • button
  • door bell
  • camera
  • climate sensor
  • door/window sensor
• Is the DECT-ULE code part of the open-source tarballs?
  • Kind-of: These are some shell scripts and some bflt binaries.
• Identify versions of the shipped OSS.

The changes made to particular files were added as a footer to the file itself. See e.g. src/dialog/cr16boot/common/display_options.c:

//
//Changes introduced by Gigaset Elements GmbH:
//Modification date:  2013-10-31 10:54:49.652221564
//@@ -31,22 +31,22 @@
//
// void display_banner(bd_t *bd)
// {

This is easily extractable and can be turned into individual commits grouped by modification date if the modification date differs at all.

rg --files-with-matches '^//Changes introduced by Gigaset Elements GmbH:' | less

rg --files-with-matches '^//Modification date:  2013-10-31 10:5[34]:' | wc -l

Conclusion: The timestamp was created as archive creation time. Create one commit per OSS project.

# search inside the directory extracted from the source tarball
rg --files-with-matches mcr16c gigaset_elements_bl26_opensource

The client-facing API is visible when watching the activity of https://app.gigaset-elements.com/#/events/ through the browsers' developer tools.

What's more difficult is the API used by the basestation to publish events. When trying to sniff the network communication with mitmproxy, an attempt is made to talk to https://api-bs.gigaset-elements.de. However, that URL is referenced just once in the image: src/init_rootfs/usr/bin/simulate_delete.sh:

# $1 - sensorId
# $2 - deviceId
echo {"method":"POST", "uri":"https://api-bs.gigaset-elements.de/api/v1/endnode/$2/$1/sink/ev", "payload": {"payload": "deleted"}, "clientId": 138} | sender 127.0.0.1 "CloudTX"

This leaves a couple of questions:

• Is this really just guarded by the "deviceId"?
  • see deviceid=CFE8D287ED60B4B8393398706788C121 in the kernel commandline at osmocom
• What is "CloudTX" (also vs. the other topics; see below)?
  • are the topics case-insensitive ("cloudTX" vs "CloudTX")
• The file is called simulate_delete.sh - does this mean that sender (and receiver) are just debugging tools left in the image?
  • this does not appear to be the case because there are quite some results for "sender" and "receiver" (limited to the relevant dir):

rg --files-with-matches 'sender|receiver' src/init_rootfs
src/init_rootfs/bin/send2ule
src/init_rootfs/bin/listenall
src/init_rootfs/usr/bin/fw_lib
src/init_rootfs/usr/bin/gotosleep.sh
src/init_rootfs/usr/bin/sensor_version.sh
src/init_rootfs/usr/bin/led_lan.sh
src/init_rootfs/usr/bin/delete_sensor.sh
src/init_rootfs/usr/bin/sirenon.sh
src/init_rootfs/usr/bin/sirenoff.sh
src/init_rootfs/usr/bin/simulate_delete.sh
src/init_rootfs/usr/bin/sensor_update.sh
src/init_rootfs/usr/bin/regoff.sh
src/init_rootfs/usr/bin/fw_prepare.sh
src/init_rootfs/usr/bin/regon.sh

I tried rg --text and ran strings on the binary blobs (uleapp, receiver, ...) but the URL was present nowhere else. I also searched GitHub for api-bs.gigaset-elements but also no results

All(?) CA certificates at ./src/opensource/certs/ are expired. I'm therefore certain that basestations have received updates of various files in the meantime.

I wasn't successful in using mitmproxy, yet. Absent proper tools to use the serial console via UART I can only try to go via different routes:

• The images ./src/dialog/cr16boot/image452.bin and ./src/dialog/cr16boot/image452_service.bin contain bootargs=.*ipaddr=192.168.1.10.*serverip=192.168.1.34
• This appears to be baked by some files in src/dialog/cr16boot/ or maybe src/opensource/u-boot-env-tools/fw_env.c
• The serverip is used like in src/init_rootfs/bin/stauleapp:

fw_printenv -n serverip

• This may allow us to place arbitrary files and start them, like dropbear or alternative CA certificates.

src/init_rootfs/bin/listenall contains topics, some of which are not active:

TOPICS="ulecontrol uleevent watchdog"
# coma cloud cloudTX cloudRX

Some of the files below src/init_rootfs/usr/bin/ (see previous section) appear to be dedicated to sensor control based on DECT-ULE.

See src/init_rootfs/etc/init.d/S40reef.sh and other scripts.

Inetd has telnet open if system_locked=false, see ./src/init_rootfs/etc/inetd.conf.

./src/init_rootfs/etc/udhcpc.scr

src/init_rootfs/usr/bin/nvs_backup.sh

nc -w 30 -p 5600 -l \> backup.file.name
nc -w 2 $1 5600 < /mnt/data/nvs.bin

xxd ./src/dialog/cr16boot/image452.bin >| /tmp/x_production
xxd ./src/dialog/cr16boot/image452_service.bin >| /tmp/x_service

# from /tmp/x_service
bootargs=noinitrd root=/dev/ram0 rw init=/linuxrc earlyprintk=serial console=ttyS0.bootcmd=bootm E8000.bootdelay=1.baudrate=115200.ethaddr=02:4e:ef:10:51:10.ipaddr=192.168.1.10.serverip=192.168.1.34.netmask=255.255.255.0.bootfile="vmlinuz".boot_from=flash.board_rev=RevB.1st_boot_pos=E8000.2nd_boot_pos=46F000.rec_boot_pos=20000.boot_from_image_no=1

# from /tmp/x_production
bootargs=noinitrd root=/dev/ram0 rw init=/linuxrc earlyprintk=serial console=ttyS0.bootcmd=bootm E8000.bootdelay=1.baudrate=115200.ethaddr=02:4e:ef:10:51:07.ipaddr=192.168.1.10.serverip=192.168.1.34.netmask=255.255.255.0.bootfile="vmlinuz".boot_from=flash.board_rev=RevB.1st_boot_pos=E8000.2nd_boot_pos=46F000.rec_boot_pos=20000.boot_from_image_no=1

The build-time configuration of the bootloader is done in the following headers.

src/dialog/cr16boot/include/configs/config_sc14452reef.h src/dialog/cr16boot/include/configs/config_sc14452reef_32MB_service.h

There are a couple noteworthy snippets here:

// How to craft this ethernet frame?
// see src/dialog/cr16boot/common/unlock.c
// and src/dialog/cr16boot/net/net.c
#define CONFIG_SYSTEM_LOCK_DEF      "true"          ///< (true|false)default value. When "true", serial console is disabled. Can be unlocked by ethernet frame.

// how can we toggle these?
#define CONFIG_BOOT_FROM_IMAGE_NO       1                       ///< (env) which image should be booted first "1" or "2" or "R" (recovery)

//= feature: longpress button detection
#define CFG_BUTTON_DETECTION            1                       ///< (feat) (0|1) enable button driven behavior
#if (CFG_BUTTON_DETECTION)
/** (export) if defined CONFIG_FACTORY_RESET variable will be exported to linux environment but not stored in u-boot's env settings */
        #define CONFIG_FACTORY_RESET            "factory_reset"
        #define CFG_LONGPRESS_RESET                     (10*10) /// (feat) 10 seconds in 100ms ticks
        #define CFG_LONGPRESS_RECOVERY          (30*10) /// (feat) 30 seconds in 100ms ticks
        #define CFG_LONGPRESS_MAXIMUM_WAIT      (32*10) /// (feat) when button is pressed wait maximum 6 seconds
#endif

vim `rg --files-with-matches -i system_locked`

Here is a utility to craft arbitrary ethernet frames. I was not successful unlocking the system with a button press (while connecting the power plug) and sending the packets in fast succession:

gcc -Wall -Wextra -Wpedantic -o sendRawEth -O2 sendRawEth.c
for i in seq 1 50 ; do ./sendRawEth; done

I have a couple of pcap-ng dumps from

• a "normal" boot sequence
• a boot sequence with the button pressed while connecting the power plug
• (TODO) a boot sequence while having sendRawEth running
• (TODO) a boot sequence followed by all sensors firing
• (TODO) with iptables REDIRECT to mitmdump active

From looking at the packets, I am pleasantly surprised to see the connection being TLSv1.2-secured. After all, the CR16C isn't the most powerful CPU. There appear to be client certificates in use, too. My hope is that once I get my fingers on the client certificate (key pair) I can use Wireshark to decrypt that TCP session - see.

In summary: Without being able to manipulate the list of trusted CA certificates on the basestation, I am (of course!) unable to decrypt the traffic on-the-fly with mitmproxy.

• src/init_rootfs/usr/bin/sysdump_create.sh

• ifplugd, ifup, ifdown
• inetc
• nc (netcat client and server)
  • see src/opensource/busybox/include/bbconfigopts.h
• sha256sum
  • see src/opensource/busybox/include/bbconfigopts.h
• telnetd
• tftp (client only)
  • see src/opensource/busybox/include/bbconfigopts.h
• udhcpc
• wget
  • see src/opensource/busybox/include/bbconfigopts.h

For the full config see:

rg -v '^"#' src/opensource/busybox/include/bbconfigopts.h | less

src/init_recoveryfs/etc/start.sh attempts to download recovery.bin and recoveryfs.bin from recovery.gigaset-elements.de.

# WARNING: based on the example at https://osmocom.org/projects/misc-dect-hacks/wiki/Gigaset_Elements_Base
echo Reef BS version "'bas-001.000.026'" tagged at: "'unknown'" version status: "'NOT REPOSITORY VERSION'" >| /tmp/txt
BAS_TAG=`cat /tmp/txt | grep -w "Reef BS version" | cut -d \' -f 2`
curl --remote-name --get --header "User-Agent: Basestation/${BAS_TAG}" --verbose 'http://recovery.gigaset-elements.de/recoveryfs.bin'
curl --remote-name --get --header "User-Agent: Basestation/${BAS_TAG}" --verbose 'http://recovery.gigaset-elements.de/recovery.bin'

The idea here would be to use local DNS spoofing to make the system download and flash a different recovery filesystem and kernel image that suites our needs.

I strongly doubt this will work but it is worth a try. Use OpenSSL's x509, gencrl, rsa, ... subcommands as needed to create a (self- signed) server certificate and see what happens.

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• bflt-utils
• GitHub clone of bflt-utils
• other auto-exports of bflt-utils from Google Code
• GCC newer than v12 lacks support for CompactRISC
• the patch landed as eb6358247a9386db2828450477d86064f213e0a8
• dropbear
• GitHub: dropbear
• Gigaset Elements WebApp
• craft arbitrary ethernet frames
• alternative
• blog
• ... via
• Using Wireshark to Decode SSL/TLS Packets
• ssldump
• Capture, Analyze and Debug HTTPS traffic with MITMProxy
• Read and Manipulate Network Traffic on Android with mitmproxy
• Deploying TLS 1.3: the great, the good and the bad
• The Rocky Road to TLS 1.3 and better Internet Encryption
• goto fail; exploring two decades of transport layer insecurity - Chapter "Downgrade Attack"
• 7 Smart-Home-Starter-Kits im Sicherheits-Test