← 研踪 PaperTrailarXiv:2610.28401 · v2
SPECTER: Covert Data Exfiltration from Air-Gapped Systems via USB Power Modulation
首次提交 2026-10-20 23:47
版本更新 2026-10-28 10:00
雷达观测 2026-10-30 09:53
摘要
We present SPECTER, a post-compromise covert channel that uses host-side USB power control to exfiltrate information from air-gapped and network-segregated systems. A transmitter with administrative privileges encodes bits through USB power-management or device-state operations without placing the payload in USB data transfers. The resulting signals are recovered through three alternative receiver paths based on smartphone charging states, visible peripheral behavior, and near-field RF activity. Experiments on Windows 10 and Ubuntu 22.04 demonstrate the channel on commodity hardware, with charging-state signaling at 0.2-0.25 bit/s across Android and iOS devices and peripheral-state signaling at 1.0 bit/s using a USB mouse on Windows. RF reception is demonstrated using a software-defined radio with a loop antenna in direct contact with the USB cable. Channel availability and observable side effects depend on the host configuration, connected device, and receiver path. These results identify host-side USB power control as a mechanism for low-rate exfiltration of short secrets and motivate treating USB power-management and device-state events as security-relevant telemetry.
作者备注：11 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables. v2: added acknowledgements and minor corrections
观测到的版本
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v2 · 2026-10-28 10:00 · 最新观测版本
SPECTER: Covert Data Exfiltration from Air-Gapped Systems via USB Power Modulation
We present SPECTER, a post-compromise covert channel that uses host-side USB power control to exfiltrate information from air-gapped and network-segregated systems. A transmitter with administrative privileges encodes bits through USB power-management or device-state operations without placing the payload in USB data transfers. The resulting signals are recovered through three alternative receiver paths based on smartphone charging states, visible peripheral behavior, and near-field RF activity. Experiments on Windows 10 and Ubuntu 22.04 demonstrate the channel on commodity hardware, with charging-state signaling at 0.2-0.25 bit/s across Android and iOS devices and peripheral-state signaling at 1.0 bit/s using a USB mouse on Windows. RF reception is demonstrated using a software-defined radio with a loop antenna in direct contact with the USB cable. Channel availability and observable side effects depend on the host configuration, connected device, and receiver path. These results identify host-side USB power control as a mechanism for low-rate exfiltration of short secrets and motivate treating USB power-management and device-state events as security-relevant telemetry.
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