Electromagnetic emissions can be attacked

Researchers from the University of Carlos III in Madrid (UC3M) and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) are currently researching and developing a new tool that can obtain encryption keys by analyzing the electromagnetic waves emitted by smartphones.

This research project was presented at the recent Workshop on Security and Privacy on the Internet of Things in Canada. Project participants include José Maríade Fuentes and Lorena González, cybersecurity researchers at the UC3M Computer Security Laboratory (COSEC), and Hernández Encinas and Luis Hernández Encinas, cybersecurity researchers at the Institute of Technology and Information Technology (ITEFI) at CSIC.

According to the team, the project was conducted with the hope of having a tool that can be used to test the electronic device and the chips it uses for security vulnerabilities, enabling software or hardware developers to address the issue before the mass production Measures to protect the safety of end users.

Lorena González explains: “When the electronics are on, they inevitably consume energy and produce electromagnetic waves, and we try to capture their trajectories to get the encryption key while deciphering the data.”

In fact, similar attacks already existed long ago and are collectively referred to as “side channel attacks (SCA).” In an ideal experimental environment, the encryption key can be obtained by calculating the temperature change during operation of the electronic device, the power consumption, and the time required for the chip processing calculation.

Andy Lilly, chief technology officer at Armor Comms, points out that in real life it’s actually very difficult to get the encryption key through this attack. The everyday noisy environment makes it desirable to capture the electromagnetic waves of a device that require the attacker to keep a relatively close measurement distance from the device and to make repeated measurements to obtain sufficiently accurate data.

If an attacker attempts to attack through long distances, he needs at least some high-precision equipment. Such a big price is beyond the reach of ordinary attackers and only advanced threat actors can satisfy these conditions.

Amit Sethi, the senior principal consultant at Synopsys Inc., believes that this type of side-channel attack is useful for some dark-hidden forces, such as state hackers or military spies.

Sethi also warned: “We can not wait until the attack becomes real before we start designing mitigations because it’s too late.”

Reference: uc3m