Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Saturday August 08 2015, @04:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the hiding-in-plain-sight dept.

Building on a long history of research into TEMPEST emanations—the accidental radio signals given off by computing systems' electrical components—[Ang] Cui set out to create intentional radio signals that could be used as a carrier to broadcast data to an attacker even in situations where networks were "air-gapped" from the outside world. The result of the work of his research team is Funtenna, a software exploit he demonstrated at Black Hat today that can turn a device with embedded computing power into a radio-based backchannel to broadcast data to an attacker without using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or other known (and monitored) wireless communications channels.

Cui has previously demonstrated a number of ways to exploit embedded systems, including printers and voice-over-IP phones. In 2012, he demonstrated an exploit of Cisco phones that turned on the microphone and transformed phones into a remote listening device. Michael Ossmann of Great Scott Gadgets, a hardware hacker who has done some development of exploits based on concepts from the NSA's surveillance "playset," suggested to Cui that he could turn the handset cord of the phone into a "funtenna"—an improvised broadcast antenna generating radio frequency signals programmatically.

With just seven lines of code injected into the embedded computer of an otherwise unmodified laser printer, Cui was able to turn the printer into a radio transmitter by simply leveraging the electrical properties of existing input and output ports on the printer. By rapidly flipping the power state of general purpose input/output (GPIO) pins, Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) outputs, and UART (serial) outputs on a Pantum P2502W laser printer—"the cheapest laser printer we could find," Cui said—the Funtenna hack was able to create a modulated radio signal as a result of the magnetic fields created by the voltage and resulting electromagnetic waves.

Damn. Knew I should have bought that bigger roll of tinfoil.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by chrysosphinx on Saturday August 08 2015, @08:04AM

    by chrysosphinx (5262) on Saturday August 08 2015, @08:04AM (#219822)

    A slow acoustic 1 bit width channel by CPU fan noise level. Works for me. Everyone can do it.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2