Demo Abstract: Leveraging Side-Channels to Turn Processors into Low Overhead Radios
Pages 360 - 361
Abstract
Traditionally, side channels have been exploited to uncover sensitive information such as cryptographic keys from computing devices. An attacker can extract private information from a device’s processor and memory by using electromagnetic (EM) radiation while code and data are being executed. Rather than seeing side-channels and electromagnetic radiation as vulnerabilities, we consider them as potential wireless communication channels for resource-constrained devices. The main advantage of this approach is completely eliminating the need for a conventional radio and antenna, which offers energy savings, simplicity, and flexibility for resource-constrained devices.
This demo is based on our upcoming IPSN’23 paper which presents the details of this radio-less side-channel-based communication framework. In this demo abstract, we briefly explain the concept, its implementation, advantages, and limitations, and then describe our setup and plan for the live demo for this framework. Our demo shows how a radio-less MCU (Arduino UNO) could communicate with a nearby receiver (a cheap UHF TV antenna connected to a software-defined radio) by generating side-channel EM radiations while running specialized software. Our demo confirms the feasibility of this method in a realistic setting and shows how our framework can enable low overhead connectivity for resource-constrained devices.
References
[1]
Robert Callan, Alenka Zajić, and Milos Prvulovic. 2015. FASE: Finding amplitude-modulated side-channel emanations. In 2015 ACM/IEEE 42nd Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA). IEEE, 592–603.
[2]
Giovanni Camurati, Aurélien Francillon, and François-Xavier Standaert. [n. d.]. Understanding screaming channels: From a detailed analysis to improved attacks. IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems ([n. d.]).
[3]
Justin Feng, Timothy Jacques, Omid Abari, and Nader Sehatbakhsh. 2023. Everything has its Bad Side and Good Side: Turning Processors to Low Overhead Radios Using Side-Channels. In The 22nd International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN ’23).
[4]
Mordechai Guri, Assaf Kachlon, Ofer Hasson, Gabi Kedma, Yisroel Mirsky, and Yuval Elovici. 2015. { GSMem} : Data Exfiltration from { Air-Gapped} Computers over { GSM} Frequencies. In 24th USENIX Security Symposium. 849–864.
[5]
Mordechai Guri, Gabi Kedma, Assaf Kachlon, and Yuval Elovici. 2014. AirHopper: Bridging the air-gap between isolated networks and mobile phones using radio frequencies. In 2014 9th International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software: The Americas (MALWARE). IEEE, 58–67.
[6]
Nader Sehatbakhsh, Baki Berkay Yilmaz, Alenka Zajic, and Milos Prvulovic. 2020. A new side-channel vulnerability on modern computers by exploiting electromagnetic emanations from the power management unit. In 2020 IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA).
[7]
Cheng Shen, Tian Liu, Jun Huang, and Rui Tan. 2021. When LoRa meets EMR: Electromagnetic covert channels can be super resilient. In 2021 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP). IEEE, 1304–1317.
[8]
Mark Zhao and G Edward Suh. 2018. FPGA-based remote power side-channel attacks. In 2018 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP). IEEE, 229–244.
Index Terms
- Demo Abstract: Leveraging Side-Channels to Turn Processors into Low Overhead Radios
Recommendations
Everything has its Bad Side and Good Side: Turning Processors to Low Overhead Radios Using Side-Channels
IPSN '23: Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor NetworksSide-channels have traditionally been exploited as a means of uncovering sensitive information such as cryptographic keys from a computing device. In particular, past work has shown that electromagnetic (EM) radiation from a device’s processor and memory ...
Delay-on-Squash: Stopping Microarchitectural Replay Attacks in Their Tracks
MicroScope and other similar microarchitectural replay attacks take advantage of the characteristics of speculative execution to trap the execution of the victim application in a loop, enabling the attacker to amplify a side-channel attack by executing it ...
A Tale of Two Worlds: Assessing the Vulnerability of Enclave Shielding Runtimes
CCS '19: Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications SecurityThis paper analyzes the vulnerability space arising in Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) when interfacing a trusted enclave application with untrusted, potentially malicious code. Considerable research and industry effort has gone into developing ...
Comments
Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
May 2023
385 pages
ISBN:9798400701184
DOI:10.1145/3583120
Copyright © 2023 Owner/Author.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.
Sponsors
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
New York, NY, United States
Publication History
Published: 09 May 2023
Check for updates
Author Tags
Qualifiers
- Demonstration
- Research
- Refereed limited
Funding Sources
Conference
IPSN '23
Sponsor:
IPSN '23: The 22nd International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks
May 9 - 12, 2023
TX, San Antonio, USA
Acceptance Rates
Overall Acceptance Rate 143 of 593 submissions, 24%
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- 0Total Citations
- 80Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)52
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)8
Reflects downloads up to 01 Oct 2024
Other Metrics
Citations
View Options
Get Access
Login options
Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.
Sign in