Everybody, good news! Security researcher [modkai Guri] gave us another reason. Let’s look at our computers and wonder who might be sniffing our private behavior.
This time, your suspicious eyes will fall on the low Ethernet cable, which he uses to filter data through the air gap. This vulnerability hardly requires expensive hardware – it uses rtl-sdr dongle and hackrf to receive filtered data, and does not spend too much on the receiving antenna, which is just a random wire. This attack called “lantenna” does require some software to be run on the target machine. The software modulates the required data through one of the following two methods and transmits it through Ethernet cable: switching the network connection speed or sending the original UDP packet. Either way, the RF signal is radiated through the Ethernet cable. The Ethernet cable is easy to receive and decode within a distance of at least two meters. The bit rate is low – only a few bits per second – but this may be all the malicious participants need to achieve their goals.
To be sure, this vulnerability is carefully designed and optimized for demonstration purposes. However, this is a fairly effective demonstration, but together with the hard drive activity lights, power fans and even network security cameras previously demonstrated, it adds another seemingly harmless element to the list of potential vectors of side channel attacks.