MAGNETO: Fingerprinting USB Flash Drives via Unintentional Magnetic Emissions

Omar Adel Ibrahim; Savio Sciancalepore; Gabriele Oligeri; Roberto Di Pietro

doi:10.1145/3422308

MAGNETO: Fingerprinting USB Flash Drives via Unintentional Magnetic Emissions

Omar Adel Ibrahim, Savio Sciancalepore, Gabriele Oligeri, Roberto Di Pietro

Computer Science

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

Universal Serial Bus (USB) Flash Drives are nowadays one of the most convenient and diffused means to transfer files, especially when no Internet connection is available. However, USB flash drives are also one of the most common attack vectors used to gain unauthorized access to host devices. For instance, it is possible to replace a USB drive so that when the USB key is connected, it would install passwords stealing tools, root-kit software, and other disrupting malware. In such a way, an attacker can steal sensitive information via the USB-connected devices, as well as inject any kind of malicious software into the host. To thwart the above-cited raising threats, we propose MAGNETO, an efficient, non-interactive, and privacy-preserving framework to verify the authenticity of a USB flash drive, rooted in the analysis of its unintentional magnetic emissions. We show that the magnetic emissions radiated during boot operations on a specific host are unique for each device, and sufficient to uniquely fingerprint both the brand and the model of the USB flash drive, or the specific USB device, depending on the used equipment. Our investigation on 59 different USB flash drives - belonging to 17 brands, including the top brands purchased on Amazon in mid-2019 - reveals a minimum classification accuracy of 98.2% in the identification of both brand and model, accompanied by a negligible time and computational overhead. MAGNETO can also identify the specific USB Flash drive, with a minimum classification accuracy of 91.2%. Overall, MAGNETO proves that unintentional magnetic emissions can be considered as a viable and reliable means to fingerprint read-only USB flash drives. Finally, future research directions in this domain are also discussed.

Original language	English (US)
Article number	8
Journal	ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems
Volume	20
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3422308
State	Published - Jan 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This publication was made possible by Awards No. NPRP11S-0109-180242 and No. GSRA6-1-0528-19046, from the QNRF-Qatar National Research Fund, a member of Qatar Foundation. The findings achieved herein are solely the responsibility of the authors. Authors’ address: O. A. Ibrahim, S. Sciancalepore, G. Oligeri, and R. Di Pietro, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, College of Science and Engineering, Qatar; emails: {oaibrahim, ssciancalepore, goligeri, rdipietro}@hbku.edu.qa. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. © 2020 Association for Computing Machinery. 1539-9087/2020/12-ART8 $15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3422308

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 ACM.

Keywords

critical infrastructures protection
hardware security
magnetic emissions
USB

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Software
Hardware and Architecture

Access to Document

10.1145/3422308

Cite this

@article{836b646dbee2442fabdbc156fe8b9efd,

title = "MAGNETO: Fingerprinting USB Flash Drives via Unintentional Magnetic Emissions",

abstract = "Universal Serial Bus (USB) Flash Drives are nowadays one of the most convenient and diffused means to transfer files, especially when no Internet connection is available. However, USB flash drives are also one of the most common attack vectors used to gain unauthorized access to host devices. For instance, it is possible to replace a USB drive so that when the USB key is connected, it would install passwords stealing tools, root-kit software, and other disrupting malware. In such a way, an attacker can steal sensitive information via the USB-connected devices, as well as inject any kind of malicious software into the host. To thwart the above-cited raising threats, we propose MAGNETO, an efficient, non-interactive, and privacy-preserving framework to verify the authenticity of a USB flash drive, rooted in the analysis of its unintentional magnetic emissions. We show that the magnetic emissions radiated during boot operations on a specific host are unique for each device, and sufficient to uniquely fingerprint both the brand and the model of the USB flash drive, or the specific USB device, depending on the used equipment. Our investigation on 59 different USB flash drives - belonging to 17 brands, including the top brands purchased on Amazon in mid-2019 - reveals a minimum classification accuracy of 98.2% in the identification of both brand and model, accompanied by a negligible time and computational overhead. MAGNETO can also identify the specific USB Flash drive, with a minimum classification accuracy of 91.2%. Overall, MAGNETO proves that unintentional magnetic emissions can be considered as a viable and reliable means to fingerprint read-only USB flash drives. Finally, future research directions in this domain are also discussed.",

keywords = "critical infrastructures protection, hardware security, magnetic emissions, USB",

author = "Ibrahim, {Omar Adel} and Savio Sciancalepore and Gabriele Oligeri and Pietro, {Roberto Di}",

note = "Funding Information: This publication was made possible by Awards No. NPRP11S-0109-180242 and No. GSRA6-1-0528-19046, from the QNRF-Qatar National Research Fund, a member of Qatar Foundation. The findings achieved herein are solely the responsibility of the authors. Authors{\textquoteright} address: O. A. Ibrahim, S. Sciancalepore, G. Oligeri, and R. Di Pietro, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, College of Science and Engineering, Qatar; emails: {oaibrahim, ssciancalepore, goligeri, rdipietro}@hbku.edu.qa. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. {\textcopyright} 2020 Association for Computing Machinery. 1539-9087/2020/12-ART8 $15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3422308 Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2020 ACM.",

year = "2021",

month = jan,

doi = "10.1145/3422308",

language = "English (US)",

volume = "20",

journal = "ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems",

issn = "1539-9087",

publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",

number = "1",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - MAGNETO

T2 - Fingerprinting USB Flash Drives via Unintentional Magnetic Emissions

AU - Ibrahim, Omar Adel

AU - Sciancalepore, Savio

AU - Oligeri, Gabriele

AU - Pietro, Roberto Di

N1 - Funding Information: This publication was made possible by Awards No. NPRP11S-0109-180242 and No. GSRA6-1-0528-19046, from the QNRF-Qatar National Research Fund, a member of Qatar Foundation. The findings achieved herein are solely the responsibility of the authors. Authors’ address: O. A. Ibrahim, S. Sciancalepore, G. Oligeri, and R. Di Pietro, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, College of Science and Engineering, Qatar; emails: {oaibrahim, ssciancalepore, goligeri, rdipietro}@hbku.edu.qa. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. © 2020 Association for Computing Machinery. 1539-9087/2020/12-ART8 $15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3422308 Publisher Copyright: © 2020 ACM.

PY - 2021/1

Y1 - 2021/1

N2 - Universal Serial Bus (USB) Flash Drives are nowadays one of the most convenient and diffused means to transfer files, especially when no Internet connection is available. However, USB flash drives are also one of the most common attack vectors used to gain unauthorized access to host devices. For instance, it is possible to replace a USB drive so that when the USB key is connected, it would install passwords stealing tools, root-kit software, and other disrupting malware. In such a way, an attacker can steal sensitive information via the USB-connected devices, as well as inject any kind of malicious software into the host. To thwart the above-cited raising threats, we propose MAGNETO, an efficient, non-interactive, and privacy-preserving framework to verify the authenticity of a USB flash drive, rooted in the analysis of its unintentional magnetic emissions. We show that the magnetic emissions radiated during boot operations on a specific host are unique for each device, and sufficient to uniquely fingerprint both the brand and the model of the USB flash drive, or the specific USB device, depending on the used equipment. Our investigation on 59 different USB flash drives - belonging to 17 brands, including the top brands purchased on Amazon in mid-2019 - reveals a minimum classification accuracy of 98.2% in the identification of both brand and model, accompanied by a negligible time and computational overhead. MAGNETO can also identify the specific USB Flash drive, with a minimum classification accuracy of 91.2%. Overall, MAGNETO proves that unintentional magnetic emissions can be considered as a viable and reliable means to fingerprint read-only USB flash drives. Finally, future research directions in this domain are also discussed.

AB - Universal Serial Bus (USB) Flash Drives are nowadays one of the most convenient and diffused means to transfer files, especially when no Internet connection is available. However, USB flash drives are also one of the most common attack vectors used to gain unauthorized access to host devices. For instance, it is possible to replace a USB drive so that when the USB key is connected, it would install passwords stealing tools, root-kit software, and other disrupting malware. In such a way, an attacker can steal sensitive information via the USB-connected devices, as well as inject any kind of malicious software into the host. To thwart the above-cited raising threats, we propose MAGNETO, an efficient, non-interactive, and privacy-preserving framework to verify the authenticity of a USB flash drive, rooted in the analysis of its unintentional magnetic emissions. We show that the magnetic emissions radiated during boot operations on a specific host are unique for each device, and sufficient to uniquely fingerprint both the brand and the model of the USB flash drive, or the specific USB device, depending on the used equipment. Our investigation on 59 different USB flash drives - belonging to 17 brands, including the top brands purchased on Amazon in mid-2019 - reveals a minimum classification accuracy of 98.2% in the identification of both brand and model, accompanied by a negligible time and computational overhead. MAGNETO can also identify the specific USB Flash drive, with a minimum classification accuracy of 91.2%. Overall, MAGNETO proves that unintentional magnetic emissions can be considered as a viable and reliable means to fingerprint read-only USB flash drives. Finally, future research directions in this domain are also discussed.

KW - critical infrastructures protection

KW - hardware security

KW - magnetic emissions

KW - USB

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85099216049&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1145/3422308

DO - 10.1145/3422308

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85099216049

SN - 1539-9087

VL - 20

JO - ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems

JF - ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems

IS - 1

M1 - 8

ER -

MAGNETO: Fingerprinting USB Flash Drives via Unintentional Magnetic Emissions

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Cite this