[HN Gopher] Jumping the Air Gap: 15 Years of Nation-State Effort...
___________________________________________________________________
 
Jumping the Air Gap: 15 Years of Nation-State Effort [pdf]
 
Author : shishy
Score  : 26 points
Date   : 2021-12-10 20:37 UTC (2 hours ago)
 
web link (www.welivesecurity.com)
w3m dump (www.welivesecurity.com)
 
| jonathankoren wrote:
| >Over 75% of all the frameworks used malicious LNK or autorun
| files on USB drives to either perform the initial air-gapped
| system compromise or to move laterally within the air-gapped
| network.
| 
| I don't get why autorun was created. It's an obvious security
| issue.
 
| sounds wrote:
| The executive summary is worth the 1-minute read.
| 
| Interesting that all the malicious frameworks known (by ESET)
| that target air-gapped networks were for some form of espionage.
 
  | SQueeeeeL wrote:
  | "Air-gapping is used to protect the most sensitive of networks.
  | In the first half of 2020 alone, four previously unknown
  | malicious frameworks designed to breach air-gapped networks
  | were publicly documented. ESET Research decided to revisit each
  | framework known to date and to put them in perspective, side by
  | side. Here are the key findings stemming from this exhaustive
  | study: * All the frameworks are designed to perform some form
  | of espionage. * All the frameworks used USB drives as the
  | physical transmission medium to transfer data in and out of the
  | targeted air-gapped networks. * We have not found any case of
  | actual or suspected use of covert physical transmission
  | mediums, such as acoustic or electromagnetic signals. * Over
  | 75% of all the frameworks used malicious LNK or autorun files
  | on USB drives to either perform the initial air-gapped system
  | compromise or to move laterally within the air-gapped network.
  | * More than 10--critical severity--LNK-related remote code
  | execution vulnerabilities in Windows have been discovered, then
  | patched by Microsoft, in the last 10 years. * All the
  | frameworks were built to attack Windows systems. We have not
  | found any evidence of actual or suspected malware components
  | built to target other operating systems. In this white paper,
  | we will describe how malware frameworks targeting air-gapped
  | networks operate, and provide a side-by-side comparison of
  | their most important TTPs. We also propose a series of
  | detection and mitigation techniques to protect air-gapped
  | networks from the main techniques used by all the mali- cious
  | frameworks publicly known to date."
 
    | lucb1e wrote:
    | Bullet points require a blank line to be separated on HN
    | (this happens to a lot of people):
    | 
    | ---
    | 
    | Air-gapping is used to protect the most sensitive of
    | networks. In the first half of 2020 alone, four previously
    | unknown malicious frameworks designed to breach air-gapped
    | networks were publicly documented. ESET Research decided to
    | revisit each framework known to date and to put them in
    | perspective, side by side. Here are the key findings stemming
    | from this exhaustive study:
    | 
    | * All the frameworks are designed to perform some form of
    | espionage.
    | 
    | * All the frameworks used USB drives as the physical
    | transmission medium to transfer data in and out of the
    | targeted air-gapped networks.
    | 
    | * We have not found any case of actual or suspected use of
    | covert physical transmission mediums, such as acoustic or
    | electromagnetic signals.
    | 
    | * Over 75% of all the frameworks used malicious LNK or
    | autorun files on USB drives to either perform the initial
    | air-gapped system compromise or to move laterally within the
    | air-gapped network.
    | 
    | * More than 10--critical severity--LNK-related remote code
    | execution vulnerabilities in Windows have been discovered,
    | then patched by Microsoft, in the last 10 years.
    | 
    | * All the frameworks were built to attack Windows systems. We
    | have not found any evidence of actual or suspected malware
    | components built to target other operating systems.
    | 
    | In this white paper, we will describe how malware frameworks
    | targeting air-gapped networks operate, and provide a side-by-
    | side comparison of their most important TTPs. We also propose
    | a series of detection and mitigation techniques to protect
    | air-gapped networks from the main techniques used by all the
    | malicious frameworks publicly known to date.
 
      | lucb1e wrote:
      | > All the frameworks used USB drives as the physical
      | transmission medium [...] We have not found any case of
      | actual or suspected use of covert physical transmission
      | mediums, such as acoustic or electromagnetic signals
      | 
      | What about the red channel transmission in VGA cables from
      | the Snowden leaks, if memory serves?
      | 
      | I'm happy to see this claim because I usually skip these
      | articles about leaking this or that in a lab environment
      | via EM (they seem too esoteric to me but the media seems to
      | love it because it really plays to the imagination), but at
      | the same time it worries me that I can think of a counter
      | example off the top of my head. Maybe it doesn't qualify as
      | a "framework" or wasn't bidirectional, even if it was used
      | to leak confidential data.
 
  | walty wrote:
  | Also interesting that "All the frameworks used USB drives as
  | the physical transmission medium to transfer data in and out of
  | the targeted air-gapped networks. We have not found any case of
  | actual or suspected use of covert physical transmission
  | mediums, such as acoustic or electromagnetic signals."
 
    | jonathankoren wrote:
    | Probably because to get this stuff to work is really hard in
    | practice.
    | 
    | Several years ago, we were playing with
    | https://github.com/fulldecent/system-bus-radio to work, but
    | we couldn't, even though we had the right MacBooks.
 
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-12-10 23:00 UTC)