Girl... Fault-Interrupted: Fault Injection Attacks

Architecture and Background

Girl… Fault-Interrupted. Maggie Jauregui SOFTWARE SECURITY TEST ENGINEER GFCI's (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupts) are a practically unnoticeable part of our daily lives, except maybe for when you have to fumble around with the Reset button on your hair dryer to get it to work, of course. I discovered a way to completely melt (magic smoke demo included!) the GFCI mechanism for several off-the-shelf electro domestics wirelessly using specific RF frequencies.

Vulnerability Analysis

Similarly, I'm able to trip other GFCI's (the type built-in to several apartment/home walls) creating a DoS on running electro domestics. Electro domestics might not be the worst this vulnerability has to offer, since GFCI's are used on many different types of electronics. I plan on building a directional antenna to hopefully perform remote electro domestic DoS.

Exploitation and Demonstrations

I will list all vulnerable patents, my discovered vulnerable products, all applicable frequencies, and all affected switch types (such as AFCI's). I also commit to do responsible disclosure of any sensitive electrical attacks, such as RF interference for equipment upon which people's lives or livelihoods may depend. Maggie Jauregui (@MagsJauregui) owns end-to-end Security Validation for the Wireless Product R&D group at Intel Corporation.

Remediation and Defensive Strategies

She has around 3 years of security validation experience, specifically doing fuzzing, secure code review, and ad hoc penetration testing. At her previous job, Maggie owned DirectX Security Validation for the Graphics Driver Team at Intel Mexico after an internship in the 3D team doing Graphics Driver Sanity validation for the same group. Maggie studied her Bachelor in Computer Science at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Guadalajara (2005-2010). Maggie's interests also include genetics, singing (lead female vocal of Agavers rock band), and modern/classic dancing. LinkedIn: Facebook: