Bad news for anyone thinking of firing up the grill for a July 4th barbecue today: some of Traeger's top-of-the-line grills have been found to have a new vulnerability that can be exploited by hackers.

As reported by The Register, security consultants at Bishop Fox recently discovered two security flaws and other issues with several Traeger smart grills and detailed their findings in a blog post. The grills in question are equipped with the Traeger Grill D2 Wi-Fi Controller module, which can be controlled using a mobile app. [One of these vulnerabilities has a severity rating of 7.1, while the other has a lower severity rating of 4.3. Nevertheless, if exploited by an attacker, these flaws could be used to change the temperature control or shut down the grill before the cooking is finished.

The first flaw is an issue of inadequate authentication controls, which could be used by someone to capture network traffic while the grill is paired with the Traeger app. To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker would need to know the unique 48-bit identifier of the grill they are targeting. However, this identifier can also be obtained by scanning a QR code in the grill's pellet hopper.

In any case, the attacker would have to be in relatively close proximity to the vulnerable traager grill to do this. As long as it doesn't offend anyone familiar with cybersecurity or hacking, the Fourth of July cookout would be safe. Still, one should update their Traeger grill as soon as possible to avoid falling victim to such an attack.

After Bishop Fox security consultant Nick Cerne discovered these flaws and reported them to Traeger, the company updated the grill's firmware and patched both vulnerabilities. However, you will need to follow a few steps to apply these updates to your Traeger grill.

Instead of having to manually update, the company's grills are automatically updated whenever new software becomes available. However, to perform this process, you must be connected to the grill by turning on the grill's power button while connected to Wi-Fi. Traeger Grill will attempt to automatically update the software four times. If this process fails, the grill will not retry until the next update is available.

If you need further assistance updating the Traeger Grill, this support page has all the information you need about the update process.

Smart devices are convenient, but they can also be compromised if the latest updates are not installed when they become available. Therefore, it is necessary to check regularly for new updates being released. In this case, at least once a month, the Trager Grill should be left in standby mode and connected to Wi-Fi.