Air-gapped computers, which are isolated from the Internet or other networks and are believed to be the most secure computers on the planet, have been the most frequent target in recent years.
A team of researchers from Ben-Gurion University in Israel has discovered a way to extract sensitive information from air-gapped computers - this time using the frequency from radio transmissions through USB ports without the need for specialized hardware, which must already be installed on the USB.
Dubbed USBee, the attack is a significant improvement over the NSA's USB exfiltrator codenamed CottonMouth, which was mentioned in a document leaked by former NSA employee Edward Snowden.
Unlike CottonMouth, USBee does not require the attacker to smuggle a modified USB device into the air-gapped computer's chassis, but this technique turns USB devices already in the installation into an RF transmitter without requiring hardware modification.
Furthermore, USBee does not require any implants in the USB firmware and drivers to perform the attack.
The researchers wrote in a research paper published on Monday:
(we quote their statement in full)
"We introduce a software-only method for short-range data exfiltration using electromagnetic emissions from a USB dongle. Unlike other methods, our method doesn't require any [RF] transmitting hardware since it uses the USB's internal data bus."
Below, you can watch a USBee attack:
[su_youtube url=”https://youtu.be/E28V1t-k8Hk” width=”640″ height=”380″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7o0qA4L4So[/su_youtube]
