Karsten Nohl

Two 'Karsten Nohl' stories July 2014 - April 2016

Hackers use Congressman’s iPhone to demo ability to listen into calls, monitor texts, track location [Updated]

CBS correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, left, with hacker Karsten Nohl

Update: Rep. Ted Lieu has now written to the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform requesting a formal investigation into the vulnerability. In his letter, the Congressman says that the flaw threatens ‘personal privacy, economic competitiveness and U.S. national security.’ The full text of his letter can be found at the bottom of the piece.

Apple may take iOS security so seriously that it’s willing to do battle with the FBI over it, but German hackers have demonstrated that all phones – even iPhones – are susceptible to a mobile network vulnerability that requires nothing more than knowing your phone number. Armed with just that, hackers can listen to your calls, read your texts and track your position.

60 Minutes invited the hackers to prove their claims by giving a brand new iPhone to Congressman Ted Lieu – who agreed to participate in the test – and telling the hackers nothing more than the phone number. The hackers later replayed recordings they’d made of calls made on that iPhone …

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Security researchers say USB security ‘broken,’ can take over Macs or PCs

The USB standard has a fundamental security flaw that allows an attacker to take over any device it is connected to, whether PC or Mac, say security researchers in a frightening piece by Wired.

Describing the proof-of-concept Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell plan to present at the Black Hat conference next week, they say the weakness is fundamental to the way in which USB works. Rather than storing malicious files on a USB device, the researchers managed to hack the USB controller chip that enables a USB device to communicate with a computer, changing its firmware. That means it can allow absolutely any USB device, from a USB key to a keyboard, to be compromised.

“These problems can’t be patched,” says Nohl, who will join Lell in presenting the research at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. “We’re exploiting the very way that USB is designed.”

“You can give it to your IT security people, they scan it, delete some files, and give it back to you telling you it’s clean, [but] the cleaning process doesn’t even touch the files we’re talking about.”

Unlike most malware, which targets Windows, this exploit allows any USB device to emulate a keyboard or mouse, taking complete control of both PCs and Macs.

As it’s undetectable, the exploit could be silently added to a USB key when it is inserted into a PC, and then infect the next device it’s connected to. There is, say the researchers, no protection at all against the method of attack short of never sharing USB devices – treating them as you’d treat a hypodermic needle: only ever using one you know to be brand new, and not dreaming of allowing anyone else to share it.