Radio Frequency | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Last weekend when outdoor emergency sirens in Dallas cried loudly for over 90 minutes, many researchers concluded that some hackers hijacked the alarm system by exploiting an issue in a vulnerable computer network. But it turns out that the hackers did not breach Dallas' emergency services computer systems to trigger the city's outdoor sirens for tornado warnings and other emergencies, rather they did it entirely on radio. According to a statement issued on Monday, Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax clarified the cause of the last Friday's chaos, saying the "hack" used a radio signal that spoofed the system used to control the siren network centrally. "I don't want someone to understand how it was done so that they could try to do it again," Broadnax said without going much into details. "It was not a system software issue; it was a radio issue." First installed in 2007, the Dallas outdoor emergency warning system powers 156 sire

Radio-based wireless keyboards and mice that use a special USB dongle to communicate with your PC can expose all your secrets – your passwords, credit card numbers and everything you type. Back in February, researchers from the Internet of things security firm Bastille Networks demonstrated how they could take control of wireless keyboards and mice from several top vendors using so-called MouseJack attacks. The latest findings by the same security firm are even worse. Researchers have discovered a new hacking technique that can allow hackers to take over your wireless keyboard and secretly record every key you press on it. Dubbed KeySniffer , the hack is death for millions of wireless, radio-based keyboards. The Cause: Lack of Encryption and Security Updates The KeySniffer vulnerability affects wireless keyboards from eight different hardware manufacturers that use cheap transceiver chips ( non-Bluetooth chips ) – a less secure, radio-based communication protocol. T

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

A researcher has demonstrated how easy it is to steal high-end drones, commonly deployed by government agencies and police forces, from 2 kilometres away with the help of less than $40 worth of hardware . The attack was developed by IBM security researcher Nils Rodday, who recently presented his findings at Black Hat Asia 2016. Hacking the $28,463 Drone with Less than $40 of Hardware Rodday explained how security vulnerabilities in a drone's radio connection could leverage an attacker ( with some basic knowledge of radio communications ) to hijack the US$28,463 quadcopters with less than $40 of hardware. Rodday discovered ( PPT ) two security flaws in the tested drone that gave him the ability to hack the device in seconds. First, the connection between drone's controller module, known as telemetry box, and a user's tablet uses extremely vulnerable ' WEP ' ( Wired-Equivalent Privacy ) encryption – a protocol long known to be 'crackable in sec

Remember the previously demonstrated technique to Hack into air-gapped computers using Heat waves? What if the same was possible to hack computers to steal data using Sound waves ? Imagine, If a remote hacker could steal classified information from a targeted computer without having to physically and Internet access to it. A team of security researchers has demonstrated exactly the same by developing a new hacking technique called Funtenna that uses sound and radio waves to siphon data from computers even without Internet access. According to a lead researcher Ang Cui of Red Balloon Security, the Funtenna radio signal hack has the potential to turn Internet-connected devices (printer, washing machine and air conditioner) – popularly known as the Internet of Things – into bugs that can transmit data out of a network using sound waves that can not be heard by a human ear. How Funtenna Works? The attacker only needs to install malware on a target's devic

Science Fiction Movies always show the possible direction of the development of technology and gives us the opportunity to think about it. The U.S. Government is also trying to develop such technology that was introduced in movies like Star Trek and TERMINATOR i.e. Self destructing Network of computers, Sensors and other devices. The agency of the United States Department of Defense which is responsible for funding the development of many technologies, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has handed over a contract to IBM for creating a microchip that will self-destruct remotely. The project announced a year back, known as Vanishing Programmable Resources ( VAPR ) , which is dedicated to developing a CMOS microchip that self-destructs when it receives a certain frequency of radio signal from military command, in order to fully destroy it and preventing it from being used by the enemy. The U.S. Military uses all kinds of embedded systems and there are obvio