Biblio

An air-gapped computer is physically isolated from unsecured networks to guarantee effective protection against data exfiltration. Due to air gaps, unauthorized data transfer seems impossible over legitimate communication channels, but in reality many so-called physical covert channels can be constructed to allow data exfiltration across the air gaps. Most of such covert channels are very slow and often require certain strict conditions to work (e.g., no physical obstacles between the sender and the receiver). In this paper, we introduce a new physical covert channel named BitJabber that is extremely fast and strong enough to even penetrate concrete walls. We show that this covert channel can be easily created by an unprivileged sender running on a victim’s computer. Specifically, the sender constructs the channel by using only memory accesses to modulate the electromagnetic (EM) signals generated by the DRAM clock. While possessing a very high bandwidth (up to 300,000 bps), this new covert channel is also very reliable (less than 1% error rate). More importantly, this covert channel can enable data exfiltration from an air-gapped computer enclosed in a room with thick concrete walls up to 15 cm.

We present a system architecture for autonomic operation, administration and maintenance of both the optical and digital layers within the integrated optical transport network infrastructure. This framework encompasses the end-to-end instrumentation: From equipment commissioning to automatic discovery and bring-up, to self-managed, self-(re)configuring optical transport layer. We leverage prevalent networking protocols to build an autonomic control plane for the optical network elements. Various aspects of security, a critical element for self-managed operations, are addressed. We conclude with a discussion on the interaction with SDN, and how autonomic functions can benefit from these capabilities, a brief survey of standardization activities and scope for future work.

Considering reflected light in physical layer security (PLS) is very important because a small portion of reflected light enables an eavesdropper (ED) to acquire legitimate information. Moreover, it would be a practical strategy for an ED to be located at an outer area of the room, where the reflection light is strong, in order to escape the vigilance of a legitimate user. Therefore, in this paper, we investigate the impact of multipath reflections on PLS in visible light communication in the presence of randomly located eavesdroppers. We apply spatial point processes to characterize randomly distributed EDs. The generalized error in signal-to-noise ratio that occurs when reflections are ignored is defined as a function of the distance between the receiver and the wall. We use this error for quantifying the domain of interest that needs to be considered from the secrecy viewpoint. Furthermore, we investigate how the reflection affects the secrecy outage probability (SOP). It is shown that the effect of the reflection on the SOP can be removed by adjusting the light emitting diode configuration. Monte Carlo simulations and numerical results are given to verify our analysis.