Recent research has revealed significant vulnerabilities in Traeger grills equipped with the Traeger Grill D2 Wi-Fi Controller, which could disrupt barbecues and potentially damage the device. Discovered by Nick Cerne of Bishop Fox, these vulnerabilities involve insufficient authorization controls in the grill’s API, allowing remote attackers to manipulate grill settings. Such exploits could cause disruptions like shutting down the grill or drastically altering its temperature, ruining lengthy cooking sessions.
The primary vulnerability involves an API flaw with a severity score of 7.1, allowing attackers to interfere with grill operations if they can obtain the grill’s unique 48-bit identifier. This could be achieved by capturing network traffic during the pairing process or by scanning a QR code inside the grill’s pellet hopper. Although the attack’s feasibility might be limited to those with close physical access to the grill, it poses a significant risk to outdoor cooking enthusiasts.
Another less severe vulnerability with a score of 4.3 was found in Traeger’s GraphQL API, which allowed unauthorized access to details of all registered grills. This issue, while less critical, could expose information such as serial numbers and grill names. Traeger has since addressed these issues by updating its firmware and disabling the vulnerable ListGrills function, effectively mitigating these security concerns.
Overall, while the identified flaws could significantly impact grilling experiences by causing either shutdowns or temperature malfunctions, Traeger has promptly taken steps to resolve these issues. The firmware updates applied automatically to the affected devices ensure that users can enjoy their barbecues with reduced risk of disruption from these vulnerabilities.
