Cybersecurity researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have helped close a security vulnerability that could have allowed hackers to steal encryption keys from a popular security package by briefly listening in on unintended “side channel” signals from smartphones. The attack, which was reported to software developers before it was publicized, took advantage of programming that was, ironically, designed to provide better security. The attack used intercepted electromagnetic signals from the phones that could have been analyzed using a small portable device costing less than a thousand dollars. Unlike earlier intercept attempts that required analyzing many logins, the “One & Done” attack was carried out by eavesdropping on just one decryption cycle.

Credit: Georgia Tech

Side channel attacks extract sensitive information from signals created by electronic activity within computing devices during normal operation. The signals include electromagnetic emanations created by current flows within the devices computational and power-delivery circuitry, variation in power consumption, and also sound, temperature and chassis potential variation. These emanations are very different from communications signals the devices are designed to produce.

In their demonstration, Prvulovic and collaborator Alenka Zajic listened in on two different Android phones using probes located near, but not touching the devices. In a real attack, signals could be received from phones or other mobile devices by antennas located beneath tables or hidden in nearby furniture.

The “One & Done” attack analyzed signals in a relatively narrow (40 MHz wide) band around the phones’ processor clock frequencies, which are close to 1 GHz (1,000 MHz). The researchers took advantage of a uniformity in programming that had been designed to overcome earlier vulnerabilities involving variations in how the programs operate.

“Any variation is essentially leaking information about what the program is doing, but the constancy allowed us to pinpoint where we needed to look,” said Prvulovic. “Once we got the attack to work, we were able to suggest a fix for it fairly quickly. Programmers need to understand that portions of the code that are working on secret bits need to be written in a very particular way to avoid having them leak.”

Read more here (Georgia Institute of Technology. “Popular encryption software: Researchers help close security hole.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 9 August 2018.)