The wireless security hack was discovered by engineering researchers from Rice University and Brown University, who will present their findings and demonstrate the attack this week in San Antonio at ACM WiSec 2022, the Association for Computing Machinery's annual conference on security and privacy in wireless and mobile networks.
[...] In the study, Knightly, Brown University engineering Professor Daniel Mittleman and colleagues showed an attacker could easily make a sheet of office paper covered with 2D foil symbols -- a metasurface -- and use it to redirect part of a 150 gigahertz "pencil beam" transmission between two users.
They dubbed the attack "Metasurface-in-the-Middle" as a nod to both the hacker's tool and the way it is wielded. Metasurfaces are thin sheets of material with patterned designs that manipulate light or electromagnetic waves. "Man-in-the-middle" is a computer security industry classification for attacks in which an adversary secretly inserts themself between two parties.
The 150 gigahertz frequency is higher than is used in today's 5G cellular or Wi-Fi networks. But Knightly said wireless carriers are looking to roll out 150 gigahertz and similar frequencies known as terahertz waves or millimeter waves over the next decade.
[...] Knightly said now that wireless researchers and equipment manufacturers know about the attack, they can further study it, develop detection systems and build those into terahertz networks up front.
[Original Source]: Rice University
Journal Reference:
Zhambyl Shaikhanov, Fahid Hassan, Hichem Guerboukha, et al., Metasurface-in-the-Middle Attack. Proceedings of the 15th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks, 2022
DOI: 10.1145/3507657.3528549
(Score: 4, Touché) by stretch611 on Wednesday May 18 2022, @04:57AM (2 children)
Yes, they sure can.
However, that costs time and money... Hence, the tech can come out sooner and cheaper if they ignore the security issues.
Which approach do you think the wireless industry will choose? (I'm guessing fast and cheap)
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 18 2022, @12:44PM
Considering that they'll route all this past the NSA anyways, I'm not really sure this matters at all.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday May 18 2022, @02:02PM
Fast, Cheap, Quality: Choose 2. (Then again, sometimes, you just don't get the quality option.)
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday May 18 2022, @02:35PM
Someone good at crafts can do as TFA suggests.
When can I buy these laminated sheets of paper with metallic foil in them?
I imagine that people will try to find better designs to print on the paper, before laminating the metal foil to the printout, to see which designs are most disruptive.
The bestest, most disruptivist designs win and are widely circulated online very quickfully!
Bonus points if the design has other visual elements that make it a conversation piece.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 18 2022, @04:09PM
The sheet reflects/diffracts the extremely narrow signal so it reaches the attacker and the intended endpoint. Current thinking is that the sheer narrowness of the beam meant eavesdropping was impossible so they left off any and all security to protect from eavesdroppers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 18 2022, @06:02PM
ah! finally we can beam the wifi around corners.
how many "hops" can one do? what's the dbi(?) loss for each "redirection"?
can you do 360 deg or even 720?