The security of mobile data remains an everlasting cause of concern. Every time a new technology is launched to encrypt the data and keep it tightly secured, the hackers come up with more innovative sets of ideas to decrypt the system.
The new method researchers found out for hacking is Funtenna. It has been a major cause of worry amongst researchers at the Black Hat Conference – 2015 in Las Vegas.
This nascent technique of hacking uses radio and sound waves to drain out all the data from a given devices without even accessing the internet. This technique has the potential to decipher and crack through the internet of things; it can transform the IoT into bugs, which will transmit data from network via sound waves that are not audible to human ears.
Funtenna Is A New Threat To Mobile Security
The hackers upload a malicious catalogue or a program to a device, and then vibrate the spikes on the basis of input and output circuit networks at a frequency of their preference. The vibrations can further be collected by an amplitude modulating (AM) radio antenna. It basically works by turning the affected device in a transmitter.
It is capable of operating under all embedded devices and modern computers. It specifically intends to work under hardware; it is the advanced state-of-the-art wireless technology.
Funtenna challenges our highly encrypted network security; even if we have firewalls, Air- gapped network systems and higher network detection systems, the data transmission takes place in a way that it doesn’t gets monitored at all.
This method primarily uses multiple forms of signals that can be acoustic, sub-acoustic and ultrasonic. Edward Snowden used a similar technology to leak the U.S. National Security Agency’s data.
Funtenna makes the use of cables on a device to fetch the required signals. It can be done by turning ON and OFF the Universal Asynchronous (Receiver/Transmitter) and General Purpose Input/ Output (GPIO). It can also catch up the signals using a low power device.
One demo for such has been provided at the Black Hat Conference and the next one is being planned for August eight, at the DefCon conference. The code for this latest research will be publicly available at the repository named Github and at funtenna.org.
The hackers have already creep-ed into automation, medical hardware, air plane control system and much more. Now it’s the turn of Internet of Things.
