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Excerpt: "In past research, Guri and his team at the Ben-Gurion university's Cyber-Security Research Center have shown that attackers could steal data from sec
by peter_d_sherman 7y ago
Excerpt:
"In past research, Guri and his team at the Ben-Gurion university's Cyber-Security Research Center have shown that attackers could steal data from secure systems using a plethora of techniques such as:
LED-it-Go - exfiltrate data from air-gapped systems via an
HDD's activity LED
USBee - force a USB connector's data bus give out electromagnetic emissions that can be used to exfiltrate data
AirHopper - use the local GPU card to emit electromagnetic signals to a nearby mobile phone, also used to steal data
Fansmitter - steal data from air-gapped PCs using sounds emanated by a computer's GPU fan
DiskFiltration - use controlled read/write HDD operations to steal data via sound waves
BitWhisper - exfiltrate data from non-networked computers using heat emanations
Unnamed attack - uses flatbed scanners to relay commands to malware infested PCs or to exfiltrate data from compromised systems
xLED - use router or switch LEDs to exfiltrate data
aIR-Jumper - use a security camera's infrared capabilities to steal data from air-gapped networks
HVACKer - use HVAC systems to control malware on air-gapped systems
MAGNETO & ODINI - steal data from Faraday cage-protected systems
MOSQUITO - steal data from PCs using attached speakers and headphones
PowerHammer - steal data from air-gapped systems using power lines
CTRL-ALT-LED - steal data from air-gapped systems using keyboard LEDs
BRIGHTNESS - steal data from air-gapped systems using screen brightness variations
- jbob2000 7y agoCan I get some clarity on the types of data they extract? Looking at blinking LEDs tells me that the HDD is on and processing something, yes, but it doesn’t tell me the digits of the credit card number it’s processing (for example). Do they researchers track the value of the information they “steal”? Or is any data at all valuable?
- ken 7y ago"Guri's research doesn't look at ways of compromising and planting malware on these super-secure systems" ... "malicious code planted on an air-gapped system can control the speed at which fans work"
- jlg23 7y agoIf you control the blinking of the led you have established a very low bandwidth communication channel.
- jbob2000 7y agoOhhh I misunderstood; I thought they were stealing data by simply observing the blinking LED, not that they had infiltrated the computer and were controlling the LED.
- na85 7y agoThe term "exfiltrate" implies that the data is being "pushed" or otherwise sent outward from the machine, as opposed to being harvested from the outside.
- fbi-director 7y agoThank you, because you wrote this, I too now understand what they meant. My train of thought was apparently on the same track as yours!
- hutzlibu 7y agoAllmost (or all?) of those attacks are only possible, if the target computer is infected. And the scenario is that the virus wants to send data out, to a nearby decice which is also infected.
- skykooler 7y agoWhich is why this is "exfiltration", not "infiltration".
- WoahNoun 7y agoIt's about how to get data out once you've already compromised the machine. You control the blinking of the LED to match match the data you want to capture out.
- mlazos 7y agoBasically the idea is that air gapped is still not secure. If someone plugs in a foreign flash drive into a computer that is air gapped one would think the data can’t leave the secure machine. With these methods though, it’s clear that any hardware observable to the outside world can be used to exfiltrate data
- makapuf 7y agoWell, I think anyone could have thought of the screen or speakers or, well the usb you achieved to plug to get data out of a computer. You have no network but I doubt you can consider airgapped a pc you just plugged a usb device into. Why not plug a mini wifi chip then ?
- amelius 7y agoWe have already seen these kinds of attacks in the early days of computing, where people could read a CRT from a nearby parked van. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking (and if you have access to the machine, then this only makes it easier to get data out)
- alexgmcm 7y agoI remember reading about that in Cryptonomicon, I knew it was technically possible but I didn't realise it actually worked.
- piinthesky 7y ago> AirHopper - use the local GPU card to emit electromagnetic signals I had this on my W10 1909 machine until the recent MS updates earlier this week. No AV, not even MS own AV picks it up, but I have found a way to detect it.
- heavenlyblue 7y agoIs there a table of the associated bandwidths?
- lostlogin 7y ago> DiskFiltration - use controlled read/write HDD operations to steal data via sound waves There is almost nothing I miss about spinning disks, but having an audible indication that something was going wrong was helpful. I refer to inappropriate disk usage (too little or too much) rather than the noises that preceded a disk death.
- function_seven 7y agoYou know how some electric cars create fake engine noise at low speeds to avoid sneaking up on pedestrians? I wish that was an option with SSDs. A little speaker included with the package that I could toggle on. All it does it make fake HDD sounds. Bonus if those sounds match the underlying logical distance and “shape” of the read/write activity.
- detaro 7y agoI wonder if one could make something driven purely by the diskactivity LED that's mildly convincing
- _Nat_ 7y agoSeems like a quirky-fun sorta project! If you've got an SSD connected by a power cord, presumably you could insert an electric-current-meter to see how much power it's drawing, then hook up a speaker to make corresponding sounds. Maybe also put a temperature probe inside of the SSD's box (perhaps directly on a controller-IC?), then another probe just outside of the SSD's box (or inside of it, but away from the controller-IC?), then use that temperature difference too? A software solution would probably be easier, but then you'd have to trust the system to give correct information, which I guess would defeat the point. Someone who'd really want to go at this might make their own controller to place between the motherboard and SSD. But unless it's passive/transparent, allowing the normal SSD driver to be used, that'd seem to require writing a driver for the controller too.
- johnchristopher 7y agoMight still be working https://www.1014.org/code/nullsoft/nbeep/ https://www.1014.org/code/nullsoft/nbeep/
- JoshTriplett 7y agoAlso from the same group, GSMem: exfiltrate data by generating GSM signals using nothing but RAM access patterns. https://www.usenix.org/node/190937 https://www.usenix.org/node/190937
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]