Rapid7 researchers examine how cellular-enabled IoT devices can be weaponized when attackers gain physical access and exploit trusted relationships between device hardware, cellular networks, cloud services, and backend infrastructure. Building on earlier interchip research, the team demonstrates how USB and UART interfaces and native AT commands can be manipulated to take control of cellular modules, route traffic, access trusted services, exfiltrate data, or pivot into backend networks, with private APN deployments presenting particularly serious risk. The research recommends a layered defensive approach including tamper protection, reducing exposed interfaces, end-to-end encryption, access controls, outbound traffic restrictions, anomaly detection, network segmentation, monitoring, and

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