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Data Exfiltration through Electromagnetic Covert Channel of Wired Industrial Control Systems
Congratulations to Shakthi Sachintha and co-authors Nhien-An Le-Khac, Mark Scanlon, and Asanka P. Sayakkara on the publication of Data Exfiltration through Electromagnetic Covert Channel of Wired Industrial Control Systems in Applied Sciences.
Co-authors: Nhien-An Le-Khac, Mark Scanlon, and Asanka P. Sayakkara.
AI-generated summary of the contribution: This research presents a novel attack vector on industrial control systems (ICS) that exploits electromagnetic (EM) radiation from wired Ethernet connections to exfiltrate sensitive information. The attack leverages compromised firmware to encode data into packet transmission patterns, which are then captured and demodulated by an attacker’s software-defined radio. The study demonstrates that this covert channel can facilitate data exfiltration from up to two meters away with a 10 bps data rate. The research also introduces a methodology to automatically detect information-leaking EM frequencies of Ethernet cables and explores the potential of increasing reliability in EM-based covert channels through error correction codes. The findings have significant implications for the security of ICSs and other critical networked or local, air-gapped infrastructure.