Prevent readout of MQTT client certificates

fbrozovic
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Feb 20, 2026 9:39 pm

Prevent readout of MQTT client certificates

Postby fbrozovic » Fri Feb 20, 2026 9:52 pm

Hi,

I'd like to use the ESP-AT as a coprocessor in an existing application to establish an MQTT connection over TLS with a client certificate. However, I would like to prevent attackers with physical access to the device from reading out the certificate/key and thus being able to connect to my broker with another device.

As far as I can tell, once the certificate and key are uploaded using AT+SYSMFG=2 (or baked into the firmware at compile-time), it is possible to simply read out the files using AT+SYSMFG=1 (and there may be other commands which could be used to get the files?).

Is there a way to securely store this data and enable TLS connections without being able to read out the certificate and/or key? Of course, the use of Flash encryption is mandatory so the PKI data can't just be read from an SPI flash dump.

esp-at
Espressif staff
Espressif staff
Posts: 335
Joined: Mon May 09, 2022 3:00 am

Re: Prevent readout of MQTT client certificates

Postby esp-at » Wed Mar 04, 2026 6:22 am


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