Informational Wi-Fi Traffic As a Covert Communication Channel For Malware

angry tapir writes A security researcher has developed a tool to demonstrate how the unauthenticated data packets in the 802.11 wireless LAN protocol can be used as a covert channel to control malware on an infected computer. From the article: "The protocol relies on clients and access points exchanging informational data packets before they authenticate or associate with each other, and this traffic is not typically monitored by network security devices. Tom Neaves, a managing consultant at Trustwave, developed a proof-of-concept tool called Smuggler that leverages these packets, known as wireless management frames, to communicate with malware."

Comments

Re:Requires Infected Computer. Nothing new.

[Anonymous Coward]

For folks building network monitoring infrastructure intended to track control channels, this is certainly interesting. (Also, I think the summary was clear enough that it was a control channel rather than an infection vector that nobody here should be surprised by that).

Just because it's not interesting to you...