Abstract
We introduce a novel family of cryptoviral attacks designed to disrupt a system for a period of time determined by the attacker. This allows the attacker to impose a specific cost on the target organization or individual. We also unveil two practical cryptographic schemes that can be used to mount such attacks. The proposed schemes exploit the key generation and signing capabilities of the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) to create machine-bound computationally hard problems. These problems are constructed using time-based and memory-hard cryptographic primitives. Victims are then forced to allocate resources to solve them in order to recover their data. By analyzing detection and prevention techniques, this paper also provides guidance on defensive strategies to thwart the presented attacks.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Luisa Siniscalchi and Tyge Tiessen for their constructive feedback. Their comments and suggestions improved the quality and clarity of this work. We also acknowledge Nicolas Venizelou for coining the term “bruteware”, which captures the essence of the presented attacks.
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Coletti, V., Müller, E., Lundsbjerg, F.M.L., Dragoni, N. (2024). Bruteware: A Novel Family of Cryptoviral Attacks. In: Pitropakis, N., Katsikas, S., Furnell, S., Markantonakis, K. (eds) ICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection. SEC 2024. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 710. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-65175-5_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-65175-5_7
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