How Hackers Could Wirelessly Bug Your Office

I think the most important part of hacking is having as many windows open as possible. Preferably with scrolling multicolored text.

Sponsored by Amazon, the biggest collector of customer/consumer data on the planet.

It's called RF imposition. The Russians used this technique to bug the US Moscow embassy in the 70's. At the time, it required a very large antenna to collect the signals. Basically, the vibrations of the molecule of air (i.e. sound) will make any object in the room also vibrate, and that includes electronic circuit boards. As per Maxwell equations, as mentioned by the chap, a vibrating electronic circuit board, even if switched off, will generate an electronic signal. It then becomes just a matter of collecting that signal.

0:45 holy shit that setup!

I like how the thumbnail just says motherboard with a guy pointing to a motherboard

You can bug me all you want, I have put a sticker tape on my phone's camera. All you can get is me moaning.

If this guy figured it out what has the NSA been able to do for the last 15 years

The critical piece of information he gave is that there has to be an entry point into your network, and for him it was a CV containing malware. 80% of attacks are initiated this way, so - secure your endpoints or get decent mail service guys and gals...

This is one of the key reasons why following PCB design guidelines For Reduced EMI is so critical :P

what they are doing is super underappreciated. wired devices with embedded systems really need to start insulating components so that no information leaves the device wirelessly

By the way this is second time I see red balloon mentioned in security tech, looks like they're about to become pretty big. Good luck guys.

Six years later and this exploit has yet to be seen in the wild

Feels like Motherboard is cranking up the paranoia on "everything hackers".

Properly shielding electronics would make them not vulnerable to this hack. But the hack is still quite clever. All it takes is a thin sheet metal cover over the circuit boards to absorb almost all the emitted radio waves.

You could say that every electronic device has it.... because what they are doing is turning an PCB copper path into transmitting antenna by quickly changing voltages and generating EM field. But there is a catch... you would not normally have connected a printer and a VoIP phone on the same corporate network. Meaning it has to go through either managed switch or a router - in which case there is a high chance that there would be a firewall rule to drop the packet.

So is this hack going to be involved one of the next episodes of Mr Robot? Pretty cool!

2 hours after this video was posted that guy disappeared from outside his apartment.

You could build all this, or pay Google or Amazon for the feeds they continuously collect from devices you use everyday. Even using a VPN Service is of marginal benefit if you’re going to authenticate to any of your online accounts, as those accounts and your devices registering to networks are going identify you when you authenticate. That said, what this team is doing is really important work, as these devices are very vulnerable, and for all of the dollars we spend securing PC’s and Tablets, a good pen test will show you how vulnerable your voice and printing devices are as well...this team takes it to a level.

Trust these guys to reference Neuromancer! Excellent work.

I would work for this guy for free just to gain knowledge