aside from being the focus of a series of bizarre conspiracy theories, 5G cellular networks offer the pledge of ultra-fast Internet access anywhere within their range. To that end there are a new breed of devices created to supply home broadband using 5G as a backhaul. It’s one of these, a Nokia Fastmile, that [Eddie Zhang] received, and he’s found it to be an interesting teardown and investigation. Spoiler: it runs Android and has exploitable bugs.
A privilege escalation bug in the web administration tool led to getting the ability to export and modify configuration files, but sadly though a telnet prompt can be opened it’s not much use without the password. Uncovering some blocked-off ports on the base of the unit revealed a USB-C port, which was found to connect to an Android device. by means of ADB a shell could be opened on Android, but on further investigation it was found that the Fastmile is not a single device but two separate ones. inside is a PCB with an Android 5G phone to manage the connection, and another with a completely separate home router.
With access to the Android side and a login prompt on the router side that was as far as he was prepared to go without risking bricking his Fastmile. It only remained to do a teardown, which reveals the separate PCBs with their own heatsinks, and an excellent antenna array. maybe these devices will in time become as ubiquitous as old routers, and we’ll see them fully laid bare.
It’s a shame that we’ve had to write a lot more about the conspiracy theories surrounding 5G than real 5G devices, but maybe we’ll see a lot more teardowns like this one to make up for it.