MAGNETO: Covert Channel between Air-Gapped Systems and Nearby Smartphones via CPU-Generated Magnetic Fields

Guri, Mordechai; Daidakulov, Andrey; Elovici, Yuval

doi:10.48550/arxiv.1802.02317

Cited by 9 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…As it has been discovered in prior work [27,35], the magnetometer on mobile devices is susceptible to the electromagnetic radiation emanated from electronic devices located nearby. In particular, high CPU workload on a device typically requires more power, which results in a higher magnetic eld produced by the powersupplying wires.…”

Section: Reaction Of Magnetometers To Cpu Activitymentioning

confidence: 97%

“…to EM activity e reaction of magnetometers to electromagnetic activity emi ed by computer components has been used to establish inter-device covert channels. Researchers used magnetometers to receive covert signals from a nearby computer encoded into hard drive activity [17], CPU activity [27], and combined I/O activity [35]. Recently, Matyunin et al [34] proposed a magnetometer-based intra-device covert channel on smartphones.…”

Section: Exploiting the Reaction Of Magnetometersmentioning

confidence: 99%

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MagneticSpy: Exploiting Magnetometer in Mobile Devices for Website and Application Fingerprinting

Matyunin,

Wang,

Arul

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Recent studies have shown that aggregate CPU usage and power consumption traces on smartphones can leak information about applications running on the system or websites visited. In response, access to such data has been blocked for mobile applications starting from Android 7. In this work, we explore a new source of sidechannel leakage for this class of a acks. Our method is based on the fact that electromagnetic activity caused by mobile processors leads to noticeable disturbances in magnetic sensor measurements on mobile devices, with the amplitude being proportional to the CPU workload. erefore, recorded sensor data can be analyzed to reveal information about ongoing activities. e a ack works on a number of devices: We evaluated 59 models of modern smartphones and tablets and observed the reaction of the magnetometer to CPU activity on 39 of them. On selected devices we were able to successfully identify which application has been opened (with up to 90% accuracy) or which web page has been loaded (up to 91% accuracy). We believe that the presented side channel poses a significant risk to end users' privacy, as the sensor data can be recorded from native apps and even from web pages without user permissions. Finally, we discuss possible countermeasures to prevent the presented information leakage.

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Section: Reaction Of Magnetometers To Cpu Activitymentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Exploiting the Reaction Of Magnetometersmentioning

confidence: 99%

MagneticSpy: Exploiting Magnetometer in Mobile Devices for Website and Application Fingerprinting

Matyunin,

Wang,

Arul

et al. 2019

Preprint

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show abstract

“…The same researchers also introduced USBee [9], a malware that used the USB data bus to generate electromagnetic signals to transmit data over the air. In 2018 Guri et al presented ODINI [10] and MAGNETO [11], two attacks that enable the exfiltration of data via magnetic signals generated by the computer CPU cores. The receiver may be a magnetic sensor or a smartphone located near the computer.…”

Section: A Electromagnetic Magnetic Acoustic and Thermalmentioning

confidence: 99%

CTRL-ALT-LED: Leaking Data from Air-Gapped Computers Via Keyboard LEDs

Guri

Zadov

Bykhovsky

et al. 2019

2019 IEEE 43rd Annual Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC)

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Using the keyboard LEDs to send data optically was proposed in 2002 by Loughry and Umphress [1] (Appendix A). In this paper we extensively explore this threat in the context of a modern cyber-attack with current hardware and optical equipment. In this type of attack, an advanced persistent threat (APT) uses the keyboard LEDs (Caps-Lock, Num-Lock and Scroll-Lock) to encode information and exfiltrate data from airgapped computers optically. Notably, this exfiltration channel is not monitored by existing data leakage prevention (DLP) systems. We examine this attack and its boundaries for today's keyboards with USB controllers and sensitive optical sensors. We also introduce smartphone and smartwatch cameras as components of malicious insider and 'evil maid' attacks. We provide the necessary scientific background on optical communication and the characteristics of modern USB keyboards at the hardware and software level, and present a transmission protocol and modulation schemes. We implement the exfiltration malware, discuss its design and implementation issues, and evaluate it with different types of keyboards. We also test various receivers, including light sensors, remote cameras, 'extreme' cameras, security cameras, and smartphone cameras. Our experiment shows that data can be leaked from air-gapped computers via the keyboard LEDs at a maximum bit rate of 3000 bit/sec per LED given a light sensor as a receiver, and more than 120 bit/sec if smartphones are used. The attack doesn't require any modification of the keyboard at hardware or firmware levels.

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“…The magnetic fields bypass Faraday cages and metal shields. Guri et al also demonstrated MAGNETO [20], which is a malware that leak data from air-gapped computers to nearby smartphones via magnetic signals. They used the magnetic sensor integrated in smartphones to receive covert signals.…”

Section: B Magneticmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Magnetic MAGNETO [20] (CPU-generated magnetic fields) ODINI [31] (Faraday shields bypass) Hard-disk-drive [39] Acoustic Fansmitter [27] (computer fan noise) DiskFiltration [28] (hard disk noise) Ultrasonic [33], [13] MOSQUITO (speaker-to-speaker)…”

Section: E Acousticmentioning

confidence: 99%

MOSQUITO: Covert Ultrasonic Transmissions Between Two Air-Gapped Computers Using Speaker-to-Speaker Communication

Guri

Solewicz

Elovici

2018

2018 IEEE Conference on Dependable and Secure Computing (DSC)

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In this paper we show how two (or more) airgapped computers in the same room, equipped with passive speakers, headphones, or earphones can covertly exchange data via ultrasonic waves. Microphones are not required. Our method is based on the capability of a malware to exploit a specific audio chip feature in order to reverse the connected speakers from output devices into input devices -unobtrusively rendering them microphones [29]. We discuss the attack model and provide technical background and implementation details. We show that although the reversed speakers/headphones/earphones were not originally designed to perform as microphones, they still respond well to the near-ultrasonic range (18kHz to 24kHz). We evaluate the communication channel with different equipment, and at various distances and transmission speeds, and also discuss some practical considerations. Our results show that the speaker-tospeaker communication can be used to covertly transmit data between two air-gapped computers positioned a maximum of nine meters away from one another. Moreover, we show that two (microphone-less) headphones can exchange data from a distance of three meters apart. This enables 'headphones-to-headphones' covert communication, which is discussed for the first time in this paper.

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MAGNETO: Covert Channel between Air-Gapped Systems and Nearby Smartphones via CPU-Generated Magnetic Fields

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

MagneticSpy: Exploiting Magnetometer in Mobile Devices for Website and Application Fingerprinting

MagneticSpy: Exploiting Magnetometer in Mobile Devices for Website and Application Fingerprinting

CTRL-ALT-LED: Leaking Data from Air-Gapped Computers Via Keyboard LEDs

MOSQUITO: Covert Ultrasonic Transmissions Between Two Air-Gapped Computers Using Speaker-to-Speaker Communication

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