Researchers hack Xiaomi M365 scooters and maneuver them remotely

• The popular electric scooters could be sped up or stopped from a range of 100 meters.
• Researchers found that the scooters’ application was not configured properly for authentication.

Xiaomi, a well-known Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer, was caught with a serious security vulnerability in one of its products earlier today. The company’s M365 electric scooters have a design flaw that could have allow rogue actors to conduct DoS attacks, deploy malware or perform a targeted attack.

Researchers from Zimperium, a US-based security firm, came up with a proof-of-concept (PoC) that allowed a malicious application to scan nearby M365 scooters and disable the anti-theft feature available in these scooters.

Authentication flaws

Rani Idan, the lead researcher behind the PoC development spoke of the vulnerability.

“During our research, we determined the password is not being used properly as part of the authentication process with the scooter and that all commands can be executed without the password. The password is only validated on the application side, but the scooter itself doesn’t keep track of the authentication state. Therefore, we can use all of these features without the need for authentication,” explained Idan in the blog.

Idan also posted a video that demonstrated the hack where their malicious app could lock any nearby scooters and be remotely controlled from a range of 100 meters. In fact, the app relied on byte sequence method to lock the scooters.

After Xiaomi was informed of this critical issue, the company mentioned that the bug was present internally in their systems and had to be resolved from its third-party vendors. However, Xiaomi has promised to fix the issue as early as possible.