Novel Attack Technique Uses Smart Light Bulbs to Steal Data

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/novel-attack-technique-uses-smart-light-bulbs-to-steal-data/

by yaseen-rob • 8 years ago

84 39 8 years ago

wlesieutre5• 8 years ago

If one of the "novel attacks" is against this:

while in the case of video visualizations, the modifications reflect the dominant color and brightness level in the current video frame.

How does this leak anything that your TV screen doesn't leak already?

This just in! People outside your window can see what color your TV screen is glowing! People at particular angles can retrieve a 4K visual representation of the media you're viewing!

userbinator• 8 years ago

Also this:

Moreover, the adversary needs to plant malware that encodes private data from the target device and sends it to the smart light bulbs.

...if you can already install/run code of your choice, why not just send the data out over the network and into the Internet?

jessaustin• 8 years ago

Maybe there is a firewall? Lots of people put smart bulbs on their own subnet that is cut off from the internet.

elorant• 8 years ago

Uploading data to a server leaves a trail. Theoretically there are allegedly untraceable servers leased in the underground but they're quite expensive and you never know who's actually running them. In this scenario the risk is limited.

underwater• 8 years ago

Don’t smart bulbs have the ability to connect to and broadcast to arbitrary networks?

hw_penfold• 8 years ago

I'll take a moment to spell out what's going on here, since they seem to be beating around the bush in the article itself, possibly for fear of imitation in the wild.

They take a smart lightbulb with certain features: infrared and media decoders.

They specifically hijack the infrared portion of the bulb's spectrum only. Why?

Because standing right next to the bulb, you wouldn't notice it flickering hot/cold, at millisecond intervals. So they can create a channel in the IR range to send anything they want, and go unnoticed.

So, then, at any time (not just while you are watching movies) that bulb can be made to send any information, and not just add atmosphere to your viewing habits. Indeed, it can both exfiltrate arbitrary data, without you noticing, by flickering in the invisible heat region, AND also follow along with your movies, independently, Much in the same way it can blend a blue channel and a yellow channel into green ambient light.

It needs the media decoder, so that they can gain fine-grained access to the bulb's transmission state. It needs malware and local network access to create the implant and continuously relay data to steal.

The benefit here is that it might ba able to amplify reads at a distance, perhaps greater than wi-fi. The signal is degraded at 50 meters, but if one wished to transmit a very course signal at lower bandwidth, it need not be a high-detail image, such as lena.

It could be the heavily aliased bitmaps of your password, read from across the street from a hotel parking lot, where a hotel has installed these bulbs in every room.

It could also use a control signal sequence, to automate sniffed passwords. For example, have a passive video buffer watching a specific window, waiting for S-O-S, before it starts recording, then it captures 60 second interval, and ceases for a 5 second quiet period, to await the next S-O-S.

wlesieutre5• 8 years ago

I'm talking about their "Deducing victim's music and video tastes" section.

The data exfiltratiom part is after that, titled "Data exfiltration from personal devices", which yes, is a new means of transmitting data. Under the assumptions that there's no authentication to control the lights and that they have malware running on your computer already.

But my point is that the whole first section is absurd. Leaking what's on the TV via a light that shows the average color of what's on the TV? It's already on the TV. Stop looking at the light from the lightbulb and look at the TV. If you can't see the TV directly, look at the light from the TV, which is already the same color as what the lightbulb would tell you.

The music part doesn't seem any better. You know what's a good way to figure out what music someone's listening to? A microphone. Granted a light might be visible from farther away, but if someone is running party lights the music is probably not quiet.

lxe• 8 years ago

Light bulbs need to support infrared lighting and should not require authorization for controlling them over the local network. Moreover, the adversary needs to plant malware that encodes private data from the target device and sends it to the smart light bulbs.

If you've already exploited the target device, why not just send private data to the attacker's servers instead? This has to be one of the most convoluted attack vectors.

sowbug• 8 years ago

To exfiltrate data from a network not connected to the internet. Drop USB drive in parking lot to get malware inside the network. Use a signaling mechanism like this one to get data out.

dwighttk• 8 years ago

Heck, drop a smart bulb in the parking lot...

bayesian_horse4• 8 years ago

Or in a network with intrusion detection or firewalls this could be a way to exfiltrate data without the system noticing.

close044• 8 years ago

TBH a a network with intrusion detection or firewalls doesn't really go in the same room as a smart bulb. You don't build a secure network and then say "hey, I should put some fun into it" :).

bayesian_horse4• 8 years ago

Ever heard of a laser microphone?

mey• 8 years ago

Reminds me of TEMPEST https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_%28codename%29

and System bus radio https://fulldecent.github.io/system-bus-radio/

bayesian_horse4• 8 years ago

How many engineers do you need to change a smart light bulb?

Seriously, I don't know...

aloisdg• 8 years ago

How many software engineers do you need to change a smart light bulb?

None. It is a hardware problem.

21• 8 years ago