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Encryption Securing Mobile Money Transfers Can Be Broken
An anonymous reader writes: A group of researchers has proved that it is possible to break the encryption used by many mobile payment apps by simply measuring and analyzing the electromagnetic radiation emanating from smartphones. Modern cryptographic software on mobile phones, implementing the ECDSA digital signature algorithm, may inadvertently expose its secret keys through physical side channels: electromagnetic radiation and power consumption which fluctuate in a way that depends on secret information during the cryptographic computation.
This means we don't have to fight with Apple every time we need to investigate a terrorist. We'll be safer as a result.
This place has gone full retard anymore.
https://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~trom...
There is useful link...
Apple will be the 1st to release a mobile phone that is protected by a Faraday Cage
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
This is *not* a broken encryption (which the idiotic title suggests). Encryption is an algorithm. It doesn't exist physically.
What is measured are side effects of the hardware at work. The hardware is broken then, but only if we assume it should be secure enough not to allow such measurements and analysis.
>by simply measuring and analyzing the electromagnetic radiation emanating from smartphones
This is not simple.
That way you can 'simply' crack passwords by 'simply' looking at the keyboard when it is typed in.
-- Ed
One potential countermeasure is to have the phone and receiver send back and forth lots of additional, random, and irrelevant chatter across the channel. This decreases the signal-to-noise ratio, and makes it harder for the potential attacker to figure out what the real key in all that communication and what is chaff.
This attack requires that the victim use an external power supply so that you can measure the power usage while they are performing the transfer. An unlikely attack configuration but smartphone makers could thwart all attack of this type by ensuring current draw while charging is consistent as to make it impossible to determine what the phone is doing.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Yes, that "security hole" has been known for a while now. Yes. We know. In the end, the complexity of the attack and the circumstances required are so specific that it simply isn't a viable attack vector.
In other words, yes, you can die from a lightning strike. But that doesn't keep you inside, does it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
but smartphone makers could thwart all attack of this type by ensuring current draw while charging is consistent as to make it impossible to determine what the phone is doing.
Or simply use implementation of ECDSA, AES or other primitives that are note data-dependent (which behave always the same, no matter what plain-text or what key is submitted to them).
example of a library build around such principles by Daniel J Bernstein.
If an implementation makes some jumps or some allocations or some data manipulation, these are points that can be eavesdropped on.
If an implementation does always the exact same step no matter what the data is, you'll have a lot less to spy on.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
This is still more secure than the printed raised numbers system. There's already "person wasn't there" schemes in place to detect a copy of a card, and I assume that'll still be in place even if a radiation device can fool the payment sensor.
Yes. We know. In the end, the complexity of the attack and the circumstances required are so specific that it simply isn't a viable attack vector.
This *peculiar* form of the attack is complicated: paying attention on the charging port. Possible implementation are quite limited (basically, having a public charging station with hacked USB charging ports).
BUT, the same kind of attack vector (listening on outside signals to try to guess what's happening inside the computer) has had in the past a few quite more usable forms: a group of security researcher has presented guessing the key based on the *noise* produced by the computer. Works even with a smartphone's mic.
And that's much more easy to put into practice.
In other words, yes, you can die from a lightning strike. But that doesn't keep you inside, does it?
It doesn't keep you inside, but it asks for minimal caution: you won't be waving a long metal rod, while completely wet and standing on the top of a high hill during a big thunder storm either.
Or to go back to TFA: this won't necesserily stop you from using online payment, but would maybe prompt the OS and hardware manufacturer of smartphones not to use implementation of the crypto algorithms that have data-dependent bahaviour (conditional jumps, memory data manipulation or memory allocation that are dependant on the clear-text data or the key data). From the outside (and that means even to the eyes of another process running on the same CPU), the smartphone should behave the same no matter what sensitive data it is handling. Even if such implementation are slightly less efficient and slower thant the data-dependent variations (that's the case with AES, for example).
There are such exemples, see Daniel J Bernstein's NaCl library
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]