Samy Kamar just released his latest hacking creation, and it is terrifying. Dubbed “Poison Tap,” Kamar’s new home brew device allows someone to plant a backdoor on a computer in just one minute, even when the device is locked.
Kamar’s method for installing the backdoor is unconventional and totally ingenious. Poison Tap targets the victim’s browser cache and injects the malicious code there. Traditionally, attacks would attempt to install malware onto the computer, but by instead going after the browser cache, Poison Tap can bypass some security measures and anti-virus software.
Poison Tap’s software runs off of a a microSD card inserted into a $5 Raspberry Pi. Once it is plugged in, Poison Tap acts as if it was Ethernet to USB device and its setting make it so that the computer begins to send network traffic to Poision Tap, hijacking all network traffic. From there, it “siphons and stores” cookies and session from the web browser of just about every website. Then Poison Tap gains access to the computer’s internal router, and it’s game over. An attacker can now remotely send code to the victim’s computer via the web. Once Poison Tap is unplugged, the backdoor stays on the computer, allowing an attacker essentially unmitigated access to the victim’s computer.
Kamar has publicly released the source code to Poision Tap, so that any would-be hacker can try it out for themselves. The best way to protect yourself, Kamar says, is to encrypt your computer and it put it into sleep mode whenever you walk away from it. You could do that, but Kamar also suggests filling your USB ports with cement.
[Wired]