Now You Can Hack a Chip With a Wave of Your Hand
When You Think of a standard hacker toolkit, software vulnerabilities and malware come to mind. But a pair of researchers are testing a different type of instrument: a physical tool that can break into devices with a wave of your hand.
At the recent REcon computer security conference, Red Balloon Security founder Ang Cui and research scientist Rick Housley presented a new approach to hacking a processor that uses electromagnetic pulses to produce specific glitches in hardware. By disrupting normal activity at precise intervals, the technique can defeat the Secure Boot protection that keeps processors from running untrusted code. (Read More)
New Cybersecurity Plans at Air Force
The Air Force is now operationalizing several key elements in its comprehensive cybersecurity plan, designed to analyze and mitigate attacks while also building cyber resilience into new weapons systems and platforms early in the acquisition process, service leaders said.
The implementation is multi-faceted, including a wide range of initiatives now being accelerated into operations and weapons development. Some of these include engineering hardware such that it can quickly integrate new patches or security fixes as they emerge, using more computer automation to detect and track cyber intruders, standing up specific cyber squadrons, and identifying potential cyber vulnerabilities at the beginning of a weapons or technology development effort. (Read More)
Is Your Home Secure?
Everything is now connected via the Internet of Things (IoT), and for the most part, the out-of-the-box security embedded into them is weak, and easily hacked. This potentially allows hackers to exploit devices like Amazon’s Echo, as well as the Google Home device. By accessing a connected toy, for example, the ethical hackers used in the study were able to send commands to Amazon Echo – like voice purchasing. These devices, or similar devices, will eventually be used for the maintenance and security of the home.
“For those concerned about the security of smart home devices – start with basic home router or home gateway best practice: 1) Regularly check for router firmware updates 2) Change default password on router 3) Configure firewall policies 4) Enable MAC filtering 5) Use guest network for guest devices 6) Use guest network for home devices 7) Disable UPnP 8) Close all ports on your firewall.”(Read More)
