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>Those are real threats. And this is not what this group is researching. Also as a security researcher, this type of research is a real threat. Lots of DoD pra

>Those are real threats. And this is not what this group is researching. Also as a security researcher, this type of research is a real threat. Lots of DoD practice works on knowing exactly how outside and inside threats can exfiltrate data. If a secret facility had locked down networks, and ensured no insider could carry out CDs, but completely ignored threats like this, then insiders (and any outsider that gets something onto such a network) can exfiltrate data without detection. There's a reason DoD pays lots of groups to do work like this. He even mentions that common DoD practice of leaving phones outside secure facilities is not enough to prevent data from escaping (although some places I've been, but not all, have been smarter in putting phones in Faraday cages to lessen the issue). As they say, attacks don't get weaker, they only get stronger. Apply some proper modulation and signal processing, even with a custom receiver and antenna, and you can likely extract data at vastly faster rates, and, for some processes, perhaps even without on device malware.

marcan_42 6y ago
Yes, this threat is real, but it's not useful to spread it out across two dozen papers. You can cover most of these techniques in a single paper. Once you realize that any light/sound/RF channel can be abused, you either accept you are vulnerable to this attack, or you make your airgap involve a Faraday cage, thick walls, and generator power or extreme power filtering (e.g. through batteries to strictly reduce the bandwidth of the power usage channel). There isn't much more to it. His techniques are not something you block individually. You block entire classes. Block light, there goes all the LEDs. Block sound/vibration, there goes the fan/coil whine stuff. Insulate thermally, that takes care of that. Faraday cage, bye bye RF. Etc. Either you care about this entire class of channels, and you do all of those things, or you don't, and your air gap just means no Ethernet cable between two adjacent computers. The specific details of each of his attacks are not useful. They do not contribute to the state of the art in any way. It's just pumping out papers. Indeed, if advanced modulation and processing were used, that would be useful research. That would be science, measuring the true information-carrying capacity of these approaches. But he's not doing that. At all. Not even trying.
- ChrisLomont 6y ago
  >Either you care about this entire class of channels, and you do all of those things, or you don't, and This vastly simplistic, binary belief that all such channels are a simple on/off is not at all practical. Every mitigation has costs and tradeoffs. Your argument is as simple as saying "don't have information, voila, no information to steal. Simple!" In real life, blocking has costs, blocks have leaks and openings. An excellent example is you write "block sound/vibration" as if that's a simple on/off process. In real life, there are degrees of vibration, degrees of cost, hindrances and benefits to each possible continuum of solutions, etc. A really funny example of this is your claim "Faraday cage, bye bye RF. Etc." when this group you mock has papers showing how to escape a Faraday cage. And no Faraday cage is perfect. And it's insanely impractical to put all data in the world in Faraday cages. And note this: all Faraday cages leak. It's simple physics. Thus it's good to know design parameters for the various modes of possible signals to design the best Faraday cage for a given situation. If they ever get to using gravitational signals, good luck with shielding :) >Indeed, if advanced modulation and processing were used, that would be useful research Then you'd simply say well "that's simply modulation! Where is the real research?" I think you are vastly oversimplifying the real world and how threats are dealt with in practice. The DoD doesn't simply spend billions on security research such when they could have simply wrapped themselved in foil and padding to solve security leaking. >They do not contribute to the state of the art in any way. I think we have different ideas of what state of the art contribution means. This team has thousands of citations from researchers that I think disagree with you. Someone is citing their work.
  - marcan_42 6y ago
    Look, I'm saying all these papers are weekend Hackaday projects. You can say it's useful, but it's still trivial, anyone can do it, and shouldn't be held up as a massive accomplishment, nor given as much credit as they are. > This team has thousands of citations from researchers that I think disagree with you. Someone is citing their work. It's not like non-research research is a novel problem in academia, so I wouldn't point at citation count as a particularly useful metric. It's not just this guy, the incentives in academia are to publish publish publish, which is why paper mills like this happen.

marcan_42 6y ago

Yes, this threat is real, but it's not useful to spread it out across two dozen papers. You can cover most of these techniques in a single paper. Once you realize that any light/sound/RF channel can be abused, you either accept you are vulnerable to this attack, or you make your airgap involve a Faraday cage, thick walls, and generator power or extreme power filtering (e.g. through batteries to strictly reduce the bandwidth of the power usage channel). There isn't much more to it. His techniques are not something you block individually. You block entire classes. Block light, there goes all the LEDs. Block sound/vibration, there goes the fan/coil whine stuff. Insulate thermally, that takes care of that. Faraday cage, bye bye RF. Etc. Either you care about this entire class of channels, and you do all of those things, or you don't, and your air gap just means no Ethernet cable between two adjacent computers. The specific details of each of his attacks are not useful. They do not contribute to the state of the art in any way. It's just pumping out papers. Indeed, if advanced modulation and processing were used, that would be useful research. That would be science, measuring the true information-carrying capacity of these approaches. But he's not doing that. At all. Not even trying.

ChrisLomont 6y ago
>Either you care about this entire class of channels, and you do all of those things, or you don't, and This vastly simplistic, binary belief that all such channels are a simple on/off is not at all practical. Every mitigation has costs and tradeoffs. Your argument is as simple as saying "don't have information, voila, no information to steal. Simple!" In real life, blocking has costs, blocks have leaks and openings. An excellent example is you write "block sound/vibration" as if that's a simple on/off process. In real life, there are degrees of vibration, degrees of cost, hindrances and benefits to each possible continuum of solutions, etc. A really funny example of this is your claim "Faraday cage, bye bye RF. Etc." when this group you mock has papers showing how to escape a Faraday cage. And no Faraday cage is perfect. And it's insanely impractical to put all data in the world in Faraday cages. And note this: all Faraday cages leak. It's simple physics. Thus it's good to know design parameters for the various modes of possible signals to design the best Faraday cage for a given situation. If they ever get to using gravitational signals, good luck with shielding :) >Indeed, if advanced modulation and processing were used, that would be useful research Then you'd simply say well "that's simply modulation! Where is the real research?" I think you are vastly oversimplifying the real world and how threats are dealt with in practice. The DoD doesn't simply spend billions on security research such when they could have simply wrapped themselved in foil and padding to solve security leaking. >They do not contribute to the state of the art in any way. I think we have different ideas of what state of the art contribution means. This team has thousands of citations from researchers that I think disagree with you. Someone is citing their work.
- marcan_42 6y ago
  Look, I'm saying all these papers are weekend Hackaday projects. You can say it's useful, but it's still trivial, anyone can do it, and shouldn't be held up as a massive accomplishment, nor given as much credit as they are. > This team has thousands of citations from researchers that I think disagree with you. Someone is citing their work. It's not like non-research research is a novel problem in academia, so I wouldn't point at citation count as a particularly useful metric. It's not just this guy, the incentives in academia are to publish publish publish, which is why paper mills like this happen.