Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • May 15, 2020 9:15 AM

@ Ismar,

With regards,

“There are even reports that “RF-enabled cyber” can transmit computer viruses wirelessly into an enemy network, although Wojnar declined to confirm or deny such sensitive details.”

I don’t know why Wojnar is being so coy about what is a well known attack method.

1, Nearly all non phishing attacks arrive via a communications link of some kind, ie a network connection.

Again it’s no real secret that most defence is,

2, Effectively perimeter defence onlt marginally more sophisticated than a firewall at the gateway of wired networks that was standard getting on for between a quater and a third of a century ago.

And it should be obvious to all that,

3, PC’s and their big brother Servers are riddled with hardware faults and more software faults than anyone can realistically imagine.

What may not be so obvious is that,

4, Wireless Network Security is basically pretty awful and such networks tend to be inside the perimeter defence systems…

When you add that lot up as an attacker you can see why remotely accessing systems via internal wireless networks is so desirable to attackers.

If you are still not convinced go back and look at what equipment the happless “KGB spys” were caught with when trying to get at World Anti-dopping information to try ans stoo Russia being band from the Olympics and such sporting events.

It’s also why I’ve had a little fun developing a cross band “repeater” that you can attach to a drone and effectively “fly in a rougue AP” to a target site…

When you get down to it, it’s realy quite simple to do when using a Linux based Single Board Computer as the AP and two WiFi dongles that work in different frequency bands… It’s kind of at “undergraduate project level” if you can be bothered to do a little reading and a little configuring. And yes there are people who will pay good money for such things, especially if you can make them “as turnkey as possible”…

Clive Robinson • May 16, 2020 11:38 AM

@ Anders,

To whom you are referring to?

The clues are,

1, A supply of money
2, Lack of technical skills.

Which covers many “taxpayer” funded entities such as law enforcment and the myriad of other investigatory bodies (see UK Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act).

The problems are not finding such customers, the problems tend to be,

1, Vetting the customer.
2, Keeping the paperwork in order.

For instance in the UK a certain police force was supplied with a prototype commercial forensics system that they then took appart supposedly as part of their “review process”. Then went on and not just used the information to build their own system but also divulged the information to other police forces, thus killing the market for the company (so it’s not just thieves where there is no honour, it’s the police and other investigatory bodies as well).

Thus you have to go to some lengths to make “reverse engineering” by tax payer funded entities not just difficult but beyond their abilities.

As a design engineer only part of the problem falls on my shoulders. As was once noted “Locks are only to keep honest people honest”… It’s the same with anti-reverse engineering technology which can be as simple as quartz dust loaded epoxy with fine loops of wire feeding battery / super cap backup power to RAM holding software, likewise machining off of part numbers and component values and not having silk screens on PCB’s. More expensive is “multilayer PCBs with all the signal traces on the inner traces and the outer layers being “flood fill” grounds.

History tells us that Tax payer funded entities have near zero respect for orher peoples intellectual property. Simillarly large corporates in the technology and entertainment sector rip peoples ideas off as a matter of course and when chalanged go “sue us and we will bankrupt you”…