Ethical hacking of Sennheiser smart headphones

Abstract: The proliferation of IoT devices has brought our world closer than ever. However, because these devices can connect to the internet, they are also vulnerable to cyberattacks. IoT devices collect our personal information, so we must take IoT security seriously to protect our privacy. In this master thesis, an assessment of the security of Sennheiser smart headphones Momentum 3 wireless was conducted to demonstrate whether the smart headphones are secure or not. This pair of headphones were chosen because Sennheiser is a well-known brand and the headphones are one of its high-end headphones, they should be expected to be more secure. Previous academic papers related to the security of Bluetooth headphones were not found, because the security of headphones is generally considered to be less important. For the above reasons, this paper conducts security assessment on this pair of smart headphones. The thesis begins with gathering information of the smart headphones from a black-box perspective. Then threat modeling is used to list and select the attacks to be performed during penetration testing. Finally, the penetration testing is conducted. The result of the penetration testing shows that the headphones are secure enough with no serious vulnerabilities found but a few minor flaws. As this thesis is not in cooperation with Sennheiser, some tests were not performed due to Swedish law. Meanwhile, due to time constraints, some of the identified threats were not attempted in the penetration testing phase and require further investigation.