‘Glowworm’ Attack Turns Power Light Flickers into Audio

guest · Aug 10, 2021

‘Glowworm’ Attack Turns Power Light Flickers into Audio
Researchers have found an entirely new attack vector for eavesdropping on Zoom and other virtual meetings.
August 9, 2021
https://threatpost.com/glowworm-attack-light-flickers-audio/168501/

Virtual meetings are vulnerable to a new, exotic attack called Glowworm, which measures an audio output device’s LED power light changes and converts them to audio reproductions — allowing cyberattackers to listen to sensitive conversations.

As an increasing amount of business is being conducted over platforms like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Skype and others, the findings present an entirely new attack vector for such electronic communications.
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A team of researchers at Ben-Gurion University have published a paper on the Glowworm vector, which is technically known as a Telecommunications Electronics Material Protected from Emanating Spurious Transmissions (TEMPEST) attack — the U.S. National Security Agency designation for unintentional digital signals which can be picked up and used to compromise data security.
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In this case, the spurious transmission is a nearly imperceptible flicker on a speaker, USB hub, splitters or microcontroller LED power.

“By exploiting imperceptible changes in the intensity of a device’s power indicator LED, which are caused by the changes in the device’s power consumption, Glwowworm is capable of recovering speech,” the team explained in a video accompanying the release of their paper.
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“This is a very interesting attack that for the overwhelming number of users has no real risk,” John Bambenek from Netenrich told Threatpost in response to the paper. “That said, for devices and environments where espionage is important, physical security remains key. No visibility from unprotected space should be possible into highly sensitive environments and devices should be designed to be segmented so sensitive information can’t be gleaned because manufacturers were too lazy to put LEDs on a clear line in the box.”
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‘Glowworm’ Attack Turns Power Light Flickers into Audio

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