Your Bulb Has Trust Issues

Abstract

Your smart bulb might be lighting up your room, but it could also be lighting up vulnerabilities in your network. As smart homes are filled with IoT devices, security often takes a backseat to convenience, especially with popular open-source firmware like Tasmota. This research investigates how a malicious actor who has access to a vulnerable local network device could hijack a Tasmota-flashed smart bulb. By changing web console and WiFi credentials, the attacker could virtually block the owner's access to their device. Through a series of scripted payloads, the study considered credential persistence, exploit efficiency, and the impact of scaling up device counts. The results show that with minimal effort, attackers can persistently compromise smart bulbs, revealing a critical gap in home network security. These findings show a clear proof-of-concept for low-complexity lateral movement attacks on IoT devices, underscoring the need for stronger local network defenses and smarter firmware defaults.