Originally published in 2015
After years of installing wireless sensor networks in homes and businesses we are now faced with a question “How is this all secure? Or is it?” A look into WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks) history and original design concepts that paved the road to us using these in our every day life.
This presentation will be a deep dive into wireless and reveal new challenges we have in protecting our perimeter when all of our core monitoring devices are riding a wave into the public space as most industrial control providers look to capitalize on fast installation times and inexpensive adaptive solutions. This research shows us start to finish how anyone with a laptop and SDR (Software Defined Radio) can hack into and take control of WSN’s from outside the front gate.
The presentation will demonstrate how a device inside your facility might reveal itself through spectrum analysis than how a hacker might flank the security of the device and own the network with very simple replay attacks that can grant them physical access, and how social engineering pre-installation and post-installation will cause you to disregard warning signs that someone is tampering with the network. A high level understanding of radio is no longer needed for packet analysis with open source tools, proper implementation has never been more important as even a encrypted device can be compromised by the last mile before installation. We will talk about the tools security professionals are lacking from the manufactures of these devices to scan for a compromised device and what can be done in the future to protect WSN’s.
