heise Security - 17 January 2013
According to a report in Defense News, the Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate (I2WD), a research section of the US Army, is looking at ways of using electromagnetic waves to infiltrate sealed networks. The report states that the army is running the Tactical Electromagnetic Cyber Warfare Demonstrator programme with objectives which include both extracting data from and injecting data into sealed cable networks.
Such capabilities would, for example, make it possible to inject a government trojan into a network by briefly parking a vehicle in front of the building housing the target network. This could
in theory also be achieved using an unmanned aircraft flying over the target building. Networks used for critical activities are usually sealed off from the outside world, meaning that injecting a worm requires physical access to the network.
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According to Defense News, its
expert sources have led it to understand that the relevant technology already exists and is sufficiently light and compact to be carried by a single individual. There are, however, still significant range and bandwidth limitations. The transmission system has to be very close to the target network and transmission of complex data still takes a long time. For confidentiality reasons, the unnamed expert did not wish to provide the magazine with further details, making it
hard to assess the reliability of their statements.
heiseDefence News
