In 2013, Snowden, a member of the former NSA (National Security Service), publicly demonstrated how a spy secretly stole data from a computer through a modified USB device. And just recently, an Israeli company developed an upgraded version of this malicious software that allows hackers to wirelessly transmit data without revising the USB and can be used in any computer that is not networked.
This software is named "USBee" because it is like a honeybee that collects honey between different flowers. It can collect data from different computers.
USBee works on almost any USB 2.0-compliant storage device. Its transmission rate is approximately 80 bytes per second, which means that a 4096-bit key can be stolen within 10 seconds. On a common micro-U disk, the USB bee has a transmission distance of about 2.7 meters. If it is a USB device with a wire, and its wire can be used as an antenna for receiving signals, this distance can be expanded to about 8 meters.
USBee works by sending a series of “0s†to the USB device to enable the USB to emit an electromagnetic signal at a frequency of 240 MHz to 480 MHz. By precisely controlling these frequencies, electromagnetic radiation can be modulated into a signal transmitter and read and demodulated by a nearby receiver. This software transmitter does not require any hardware changes to the USB.
Data is transmitted via electromagnetic signals and signals are read using a GNU radio receiver and demodulator. In this way, even if a computer is not connected to a wired network, there is no microphone, there is no Wifi, there is no Bluetooth, once infected by the USBee, it is possible to leak data.
In a paper published on Monday, Israeli researchers wrote: “We have developed a program that can rely on the electromagnetic radiation of the USB adapter to achieve short-range data extraction only by software. This is different from other methods because we do not Need to add any hardware to the device to receive wireless signals, we use USB internal data bus." (Thesis link)
Take a comparison with the malware “CottonMouth†that was previously demonstrated by Snowden. CottonMouth is a USB data extractor developed by NSA and requires hardware modification of the USB carrier in advance. This also means that someone must bring the modified USB into the area where the target computer is located. In contrast, USBee is much more advanced and it can turn existing USB devices into data transmitters without any hardware modifications. In this way, it is no longer necessary for someone to bring modified equipment into the target building. Simply install the software on the existing USB of its employees to steal data.
According to reports, USBee was designed by Mordechai Guri, chief research and development manager of the Cyber ​​Security Research Center at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. Guri is also the CEO of Morphisec Endpoint Security Solutions. Some time ago, they also announced a method of secretly transmitting data through hard disk noise. Lei Feng Network (search "Lei Feng Network" public concern) has also done a report on this. The team developed a number of similar software, including the AirHopper, which turns a computer's video card into an FM signal transmitter, BitWhisper, which uses hot-swap to transfer data, and Fansmitter, which can transmit data through computer fan noise.
Via arstechnica
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do you know? Hackers can listen to computer fan noise to steal your data