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.
Air-gapped networks are isolated from the Internet, since they store and process sensitive information. It has been shown that attackers can exfiltrate data from air-gapped networks by sending acoustic signals generated by computer speakers, however this type of covert channel relies on the existence of loudspeakers in the air-gapped environment. In this paper, we present CD-LEAK - a novel acoustic covert channel that works in constrained environments where loudspeakers are not available to the attacker. Malware installed on a compromised computer can maliciously generate acoustic signals via the optical CD/DVD drives. Binary information can then be modulated over the acoustic signals and be picked up by a nearby Internet connected receiver (e.g., a workstation, hidden microphone, smartphone, laptop, etc.). We examine CD/DVD drives and discuss their acoustical characteristics. We also present signal generation and detection, and data modulation and demodulation algorithms. Based on our proposed method, we developed a transmitter and receiver for PCs and smartphones, and provide the design and implementation details. We examine the channel and evaluate it on various optical drives. We also provide a set of countermeasures against this threat - which has been overlooked.
We propose a secure key generation and distribution scheme for data encryption in classical optical fiber channel. A Delay interferometer (DI) is used to track the random phase fluctuation inside fiber, while the reconfigurable lengths of polarization-maintaining (PM) fiber are set as the source of optical phase fluctuations. The output signals from DI are extracted as the secret key and shared between the two-legal transmitter and receiver. Because of the randomness of local environment and the uniqueness of fiber channel, the phase fluctuation between orthogonal polarization modes (OPMs) can be used as secure keys to enhance the level of security in physical layer. Experimentally, we realize the random key generation and distribution over 25-km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF). Moreover, the proposed key generation scheme has the advantages of low cost, compatible with current optical fiber networks and long distance transmission with optical amplifiers.
The communication security issue brought by Smart Grid is of great importance and should not be ignored in backbone optical networks. With the aim to solve this problem, this paper firstly conducts deep analysis into the security challenge of optical network under smart power grid environment and proposes a so-called lightweight security signaling mechanism of multi-domain optical network for Energy Internet. The proposed scheme makes full advantage of current signaling protocol with some necessary extensions and security improvement. Thus, this lightweight security signaling protocol is designed to make sure the end-to-end trusted connection. Under the multi-domain communication services of smart power grid, evaluation simulation for the signaling interaction is conducted. Simulation results show that this proposed approach can greatly improve the security level of large-scale multi-domain optical network for smart power grid with better performance in term of connection success rate performance.
In this paper, we introduce an optical network with cross-layer security, which can enhance security performance. In the transmitter, the user's data is encrypted at first. After that, based on optical encoding, physical layer encryption is implemented. In the receiver, after the corresponding optical decoding process, decryption algorithm is used to restore user's data. In this paper, the security performance has been evaluated quantitatively.
This article presents a systematic review on the challenges and recent progress of timing and carrier synchronization techniques for high-speed optical transmission systems using single-carrier-based coherent optical modulation formats.
Conventional photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) involves detection of optically induced thermo-elastic waves using ultrasound transducers. This approach requires acoustic coupling and the spatial resolution is limited by the focusing properties of the transducer. We present an all-optical PAM approach that involved detection of the photoacoustically induced surface displacements using an adaptive, two-wave mixing interferometer. The interferometer consisted of a 532-nm, CW laser and a Bismuth Silicon Oxide photorefractive crystal (PRC) that was 5×5×5 mm3. The laser beam was expanded to 3 mm and split into two paths, a reference beam that passed directly through the PRC and a signal beam that was focused at the surface through a 100-X, infinity-corrected objective and returned to the PRC. The PRC matched the wave front of the reference beam to that of the signal beam for optimal interference. The interference of the two beams produced optical-intensity modulations that were correlated with surface displacements. A GHz-bandwidth photoreceiver, a low-noise 20-dB amplifier, and a 12-bit digitizer were employed for time-resolved detection of the surface-displacement signals. In combination with a 5-ns, 532-nm pump laser, the interferometric probe was employed for imaging ink patterns, such as a fingerprint, on a glass slide. The signal beam was focused at a reflective cover slip that was separated from the fingerprint by 5 mm of acoustic-coupling gel. A 3×5 mm2 area of the coverslip was raster scanned with 100-μm steps and surface-displacement signals at each location were averaged 20 times. Image reconstruction based on time reversal of the PA-induced displacement signals produced the photoacoustic image of the ink patterns. The reconstructed image of the fingerprint was consistent with its photograph, which demonstrated the ability of our system to resolve micron-scaled features at a depth of 5 mm.