Cybersecurity

In one, they say they were able to hijack an Internet-connected security cam and capture footage of the power LED of a smart card reader 16 meters away. After processing and analyzing the footage, the team was able to recover the 256-bit key.

Wow! That's incredibly impressive.

In another study, they were able to take iPhone footage of the power LED of Logitech speakers that were hooked up to an USB hub that was also charging a Samsung Galaxy S8 smart phone. From looking at the speakers' power LED and analyzing its colors and brightness, the team says they were able to uncover the 378-bit key for the Samsung Galaxy — a remarkable scenario because the key was solved indirectly by looking at another connected device.

Holy shit! That's unbelievable! By which I mean: I don't believe you.

Reminds me of a story from nearly a decade ago where researchers were able to decrypt an RSA key by recording a CPU with a phone.

The attack can extract full 4096-bit RSA decryption keys from laptop computers (of various models), within an hour, using the sound generated by the computer during the decryption of some chosen ciphertexts

This is like using visible vibrations in a plant to figure out the sounds in that room from far away. Very cool

The part about hacking Galaxy S8 keys by looking at a speaker connected to same usb.. I think it's very far fetched.

S8 has a battery that is constantly charged by usb cable. When you unlock the phone, power draw doesn't change except maybe for a brief second when key is entered.

I've read the paper, it's really very cool. However there is nothing to worry about in real life. They captured thousands of uses of a smartcard and then used statistical analysis to gleen data used to attack a protocol with known vulnerabilities. In another setup they had a phone right up against the power led, using the roller shutter effect to collect a single point of data at really high speed. The whole thing also depends on a shitty power supply with a led in the main path. Most power supplies these days don't have such a led and if they do it's not always the case they leak data like this.

The circumstances that allow this to work aren't likely to occur in real life. Even if everything is just right, it still requires a way to collect thousands of samples to do the statistical analysis. And then also requires a scheme with known specific vulnerabilities to work.

Very cool research, but don't worry about taping off al your power leds for security reasons.

There was a story like this in Zalewsky's book Silence on the Wire. Not as technically sophisticated, of course. Great read if you're into side channel attacks.

The concept of this is cool, but it feels strictly academic. When I read about this from another article it said the smart card had to be filmed for 60+ minutes of key exchange time. A normal key exchange is a fraction of a second. The ideal circumstances needed for this just don't exist in the real world...