Raspberry Pi As Hardware Backdoor

An anonymous reader writes "NCC Group has released a new whitepaper at the Blackhat Europe conference on using a Raspberry PI as a hardware-based backdoor (PDF) in laptop docking stations. From the paper: 'The IT department is typically more concerned about someone stealing your laptop, so they'll ask you to secure your laptop with a Kensington-style lock, but not necessarily to secure the dock. This paper details how attackers can exploit the privileged position that laptop docking stations have within an environment. It will also describe the construction of a remotely controllable, covert hardware implant, but most importantly it will discuss some of the techniques that can be employed to detect such devices and mitigate the risks that they pose.'"

Comments

Re:article wrong on voltage divider for power sour

[gweihir]

Hehehehe, fascinating!

In addition, these people do not know that a voltage divider is entirely unsuitable for powering anything with variable current consumption. The easy solution would be to use a switching-mode 5V 1A regulator module like the Traco Power TSR 1-2450. My guess is they never powered the Raspberry Pi from the 19V input. These people seem to understand digital electronics to some degree, but gave no clue about analog electronics.

The demo is nice nonetheless.