Identifying Malware By Sniffing Its EM Signature

January 19, 2022 by Tom Nardi 17 Comments

The phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is most often attributed to Carl Sagan, specifically from his television series Cosmos. Sagan was probably not the first person to put forward such a hypothesis, and the show certainly didn’t claim he was. But that’s the power of TV for you; the term has since come to be known as the “Sagan Standard” and is a handy aphorism that nicely encapsulates the importance of skepticism and critical thinking when dealing with unproven theories.

It also happens to be the first phrase that came to mind when we heard about Obfuscation Revealed: Leveraging Electromagnetic Signals for Obfuscated Malware Classification, a paper presented during the 2021 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC). As described in the mainstream press, the paper detailed a method by which researchers were able to detect viruses and malware running on an Internet of Things (IoT) device simply by listening to the electromagnetic waves being emanated from it. One needed only to pass a probe over a troubled gadget, and the technique could identify what ailed it with near 100% accuracy.

Those certainly sound like extraordinary claims to us. But what about the evidence? Well, it turns out that digging a bit deeper into the story uncovered plenty of it. Not only has the paper been made available for free thanks to the sponsors of the ACSAC, but the team behind it has released all of code and documentation necessary to recreate their findings on GitHub.

Unfortunately we seem to have temporarily misplaced the $10,000 1 GHz Picoscope 6407 USB oscilloscope that their software is written to support, so we’re unable to recreate the experiment in full. If you happen to come across it, please drop us a line. But in the meantime we can still walk through the process and try to separate fact from fiction in classic Sagan style.

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Arduino Meets Quantum Computer

January 19, 2022 by Al Williams 8 Comments

Quantum computers aren’t quite ready for the home lab, but since there are ways to connect to some over the Internet, you can experiment with them more easily than you might think. [Norbert] decided to interface a giant quantum computer to an ordinary Arduino. Why? Well, that isn’t necessarily clear, but then again, why not? He explains basic quantum computing and shows his setup in the video below.

Using the IBM quantum computer and the open source Qiskit makes it relatively easy, with the Python code he’s using on the PC acting as a link between the Arduino and the IBM computer. Of course, you can also use simulation instead of using the real hardware, and for such a simple project it probably doesn’t matter.

Granted, the demo is pretty trivial, lighting an LED with the state of qubit. But the technique might be useful if you wanted to, say, gather information from the real world into a quantum computer. You have to start somewhere.

We’ve looked at quantum computers before. They tell us it is the next big thing, so we want to be prepared. Qiskit is one of several options available today to make it easier.

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Adding WiFi Remote Control To Home Electronics? Be Prepared To Troubleshoot

January 19, 2022 by Donald Papp 32 Comments

[Alex] recently gave a Marantz audio amplifier the ability to be remotely-controlled via WiFi by interfacing an ESP32 board to a handy port, but the process highlights how interfacing to existing hardware often runs into little, unforeseeable problems that can sink the project unless solved.

At its core, the project uses an ESP32 and the ESPAsyncWebServer project to create a handy web interface that is accessible over WiFi. Then, to actually control the amplifier, [Alex] decoded the IR-based remote signals by watching the unit’s REMOTE ports, which are intended as a pass-through and repeater for IR signals to other Marantz units. This functionality can be exploited; by sending the right signals to the REMOTE IN port, the unit can be controlled by the ESP32. With the ESP32 itself accessible by just about any WiFi device, [Alex] gains the freedom to control his amplifier with much greater flexibility than just the IR remote would offer.

Sounds fairly straightforward, but as usual when interfacing to an existing piece of electronics, there were a few glitches. The first was that high and inconsistent latency (from 10 ms to 100 ms) made controlling the amplifier a sometimes frustrating experience, but that was solved by disabling power saving on the WiFi interface. Another issue was that sending signals by connecting a GPIO pin to the REMOTE IN port of the amplifier worked, but had the side effect of causing the amplifier to no longer listen to the IR remote. Apparently, current flowing from the REMOTE port to the ESP32’s GPIO pin was to blame, because adding a diode in between fixed the problem.

The GitHub repository holds the design files and code. This kind of project can be pretty complex, because the existing hardware doesn’t always play nice, and useful boards like a modern ESP32 aren’t always available. Adding a wireless interface to vintage audio equipment has in the past involved etching circuit boards and considerably more parts.