Scientist-developed malware covertly jumps air gaps using inaudible sound

lotuseclat79 · Dec 3, 2013

Scientist-developed malware covertly jumps air gaps using inaudible sound.

Malware communicates at a distance of 65 feet using built-in mics and speakers.
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Related to Persistent BIOS malware with hypervisor and SDR found thread here at Wilders.

-- Tom

Baserk · Dec 5, 2013

At 20 bits/sec, you'd grow a beard trying to 'insert' something like a badbios image but harvesting passwords/details becomes viable.

Cool research article from FraunHofer Institute 'On Covert Acoustical Mesh Networks in Air' PDF link

Physical access using ACS modem: The ACS modem uses JANUS [11], a robust signaling method for underwater communications. It is based on FHSS (frequency-hopping spread spectrum) with 48 carriers.
...
VIII. CONCLUSION
We have shown that the establishment of covert acoustical mesh networks in air is feasible in setups with commonly available business laptops.
By reutilizing an underwater communication system, we take advantage of a network stack that was built with robust acoustical communication in mind.
The presented approach to covert acoustical mesh networks allows to transmit messages with a rate of approximately 20 bit/s up to a range of 19.7 m between two connected nodes.
The complete path of a single frame from the infected victim at the first hop to the attacker at the last hop over two additional infected drones as intermediate hops took 18 s.
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Testing was done with 5 Lenovo T400 Thinkpads (-mics and speakers with standard Intel Corporation 82801I
(ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller), using Debian Wheezy as OS.

From the recorded frequency range it can be discovered that we are able to process frequencies in the low ultrasonic range around 20,000 Hz.
Previously performed tests with a Lenovo T410 Laptop featuring the Conexant 20585 audio codec (with 192 kHz DAC / 96kHz ADC) [12]have shown very similar results.
The results lead us to the conclusion that ultrasonic or near ultrasonic communication with computing systems of the Lenovo T400 series is possible.
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CloneRanger · Dec 5, 2013

Nice to see that it's been proved, & not just fantasy etc I doubt if any of us on here would need to worry about this though !

I think this should be in the BADBIOS thread

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Scientist-developed malware covertly jumps air gaps using inaudible sound

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Scientist-developed malware covertly jumps air gaps using inaudible sound

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