New cyber threat offers potentially useful tool for militaries
Keysight Technologies has discovered a new technique for data exfiltration. (Photo: Keysight)
A novel method of data exfiltration could enable undetectable long-range communications in hostile battle zones.
Vulnerabilities in Medium Access Control (MAC) layer protocols can be exploited for undetectable long-range communications using third-party networks in a new technique dubbed Sparrow.
The technique also enables hackers or cyber attackers to leak data from compromised systems, said Reza Soosahabi, a researcher and engineer at US-based Keysight Technologies who discovered this novel method of data exfiltration.
Soosahabi explained to Shephard how Sparrow works: ‘This vulnerability is the result of having unprotected broadcast signals in MAC layer procedures that can be implicitly controlled by anonymous user devices.’
A MAC layer protocol is responsible for moving data packets from one network to another via
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