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AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Crafty hackers can make a tool to eavesdrop on some 6G wireless signals in as little as five minutes using office paper, an inkjet printer, a metallic foil transfer and a laminator.

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.

ScienceDaily [sciencedaily.com]

[Source]: Rice University [rice.edu]

[Journal Reference]: Metasurface-in-the-Middle Attack: From Theory to Experiment [acm.org]

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