Fortinet Discovers Meian Safety Alarm Android Application Weak Credential Encryption Vulnerability

Summary

Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs has discovered a weak credential encryption vulnerability in Android application for Meian Safety Alarm.
Meian is a manufacturer of home safety alarms. Some of their alarms are remotely controllable via SMS: you can start / stop the alarm remotely, get its current status, enable/disable some zones, etc. To be correctly processed by the alarm, the SMS to send must comply with a strict format. To assist end-users in correctly issuing this SMS, Meian has implemented an Android application where you just need to push a button like start/stop/status etc. Of course, an initial configuration step is required, to provide the phone number of the alarm and its management password.
The discovered vulnerability in the Android application is that the alarm's management password is weakly protected. It is stored on the phone in a file which is encrypted using a proprietary encryption algorithm. Moreover, a default password for this encryption algorithm is hard-coded and probably used by careless end-users.

Solutions

We reported the vulnerability to the vendor three times, but didn't get any response. So no solution is available for now.

Acknowledgement

This vulnerability was discovered by Axelle Apvrille of Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs.

IPS Subscription

Fortinet customers who subscribe to Fortinet's intrusion prevention (IPS) service should be protected against this vulnerability with the appropriate configuration parameters in place. Fortinet's IPS service is one component of FortiGuard Subscription Services, which also offer comprehensive solutions such as antivirus, Web content filtering and antispam capabilities. These services enable protection against threats on both application and network layers. FortiGuard Services are continuously updated by FortiGuard Labs, which enables Fortinet to deliver a combination of multi-layered security intelligence and true zero-day protection from new and emerging threats. These updates are delivered to all FortiGate, FortiMail and FortiClient products. Fortinet strictly follows responsible disclosure guidelines to ensure optimum protection during a threat's lifecycle.