A round pie with everything…. data, please! – Secret encryption keys can be stolen from a cheap gadget, so small it could fit in a pie!
Israeli security researchers have demonstrated how they can capture radio emissions emitted by laptops, inadvertently leaking key information.
Until now, the idea of stealing radio signals was thought to require expensive and bulky equipment. But the powerful team of four managed to do it with very cheap components so small in size that they are capable of being hidden inside a pie.
The attack, developed and organized by Daniel Genkin and his fellow students from Tel Aviv University, monitors the radio waves emitted by laptops when their central processing units (CPUs) are processing data.
The team discovered that many different processes on a computer, such as playing a game or decrypting a file, have a characteristic pattern of radioactivity.
The different power requirements force the CPU to change the radio wave emission, they write, among other things, in their report.
By recording these signals when the computer decrypts a specific email message sent by an attacker, they were able to obtain the key used to secure the data, they said.
Once they proved that the attack was successful in their lab, the team created the mobile instrument that will help them steal the data, called the Portable Instrument for Trace Acquisition (Pita), and of course which is so small that they managed to fit it in a pie!
The attack was able to work from a distance of about 50cm (1ft 8in), according to the researchers.
Using their technique, the researchers were able to steal the keys used in various widely used encryption programs and algorithms to protect data.
Steve Armstrong, the manager of Logically Secure, said: "If they could do this from 10m (32ft) away in a different room, I would be really impressed. Since the device has to be within 20cm, I'm not.".
