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"White" hackers have created a device for reverse engineering and hacking processors and other chips. The gadget itself is not unique – such devices have existed for quite a long time and are available to the special services, but they were able to make it hundreds of times cheaper with the help of publicly available components and 3D printing, and they achieved that everyone can assemble the same one. They will make their drawings, component lists, and instructions publicly available. The design is based on the Raspberry Pi.
For everyone and almost for nothing
The RayV Lite device was created for reverse engineering and hardware hacking of microchips, writes the Wired portal. The design is based on a laser, and the key feature of RayV Lite is its comparative cheapness. The computer part of the device is a single-board computer of the Raspberry Pi family, which is included in the price.
RayV Lite costs approximately $500 or 42.9 thousand rubles at the exchange rate of the Central Bank on August 2, 2024, but it is several hundred times cheaper than other similar devices, the price of which can reach up to $150 thousand (12.87 million rubles). These are often used by special services.
Another feature of RayV Lite is the ability to assemble the device "on the knee". Its creators claim that to make it so cheap and affordable for everyone, they were helped by the use of components that can be bought in a store or printed on a 3D printer. And so that everyone has a chance to build their own copy of RayV Lite, they will post all the necessary instructions on the Internet in the public domain in the foreseeable future.
Behind RayV Lite are two employees of the information security company NetSPI-Sam Beaumont and Larry Trowell, who identify themselves as "white" or" ethical " hackers-crackers who conduct attacks on certain objects in order to then demonstrate to their owners the "holes"found in them. They also exist in Russia, but their activities are not yet protected by law and can be qualified as a violation of a number of articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
For the benefit of society
The authors of RayV Lite set themselves the goal of forcing chip manufacturers to pay more attention to the security of their products, which, as practice shows, many of them frankly neglect. This is clearly evident in the example of Intel processors, which over the past few years have found a huge number of vulnerabilities, many of which are not fixed. The authors of the project stated that the vast majority of modern chips are completely unprotected from hacking with a laser.
Using the creation of Beaumont and Trowell, you can perform two different classes of attacks on microchips to break them. The first one is called Laser Fault Injection( LFI), and the second one is called Laser Logic State Imaging (LLSI).
RayV Lite assembly
The LFI attack uses a short-term laser pulse to interfere with the processor's transistor charges, "flipping bits" from 1 to 0 or vice versa, writes Wired. In some cases, switching these bits can lead to very serious consequences, which the authors of the device found out in the course of experiments.
For example, for one automotive chip (the name was not disclosed), which was tested by the creators of RayV Lite, a laser failure of the chip at a certain point can prevent a security check that puts the chip's firmware in a protected state, thereby leaving it unprotected and allowing you to easily scan its microcode for vulnerabilities.
The LFI attack can be a problem for owners of hardware crypto wallets, since, according to Wired, the chips used in them are vulnerable to such attacks. So, with the help of LFI, you can cause the chip to fail at the moment when it requests a PIN code to unlock the cryptographic key and gain access to the owner's funds. "You take the chip off the crypto wallet, hit it with a laser at the right moment, and it just assumes you have a PIN," Trowell said.
The LLSI attack offers a lot more possibilities. For example, you can use it to recreate the detailed internal architecture of a chip. This is useful not only for hacking, but also for reverse engineering.
Two attacks and two devices
Hackers plan to release two modifications of RayV Lite, one for each type of attack. Now they have a version ready for LFI, but they intend to make a build suitable for LLSI in the coming months. There are also plans to create a universal version of RayV Lite for both attacks.
The global premiere of RayV Lite will take place as part of the Black Hat Cybersecurity Conference, which will be held in Las Vegas (USA) from August 3 to 8, 2024.
The most expensive components of this device are the laser lens and its microcontroller, each of which costs $100. At the same time, the laser itself is cheap. The Raspberri Pi single-board computer manages everything-the Wired model does not specify, but specifies the price in the amount of $68. This may well turn out to be the latest Raspberry Pi 5, which in the version with 4 GB of RAM costs 48 pounds, or about $62 at the exchange rate on August 2, 2024.
The case of RayV Lite is printed on a 3D printer based on a three-dimensional model, available in the public domain. The code is written from scratch, but also using open-source tools, and will be available to everyone.
For everyone and almost for nothing
The RayV Lite device was created for reverse engineering and hardware hacking of microchips, writes the Wired portal. The design is based on a laser, and the key feature of RayV Lite is its comparative cheapness. The computer part of the device is a single-board computer of the Raspberry Pi family, which is included in the price.
RayV Lite costs approximately $500 or 42.9 thousand rubles at the exchange rate of the Central Bank on August 2, 2024, but it is several hundred times cheaper than other similar devices, the price of which can reach up to $150 thousand (12.87 million rubles). These are often used by special services.
Another feature of RayV Lite is the ability to assemble the device "on the knee". Its creators claim that to make it so cheap and affordable for everyone, they were helped by the use of components that can be bought in a store or printed on a 3D printer. And so that everyone has a chance to build their own copy of RayV Lite, they will post all the necessary instructions on the Internet in the public domain in the foreseeable future.
Behind RayV Lite are two employees of the information security company NetSPI-Sam Beaumont and Larry Trowell, who identify themselves as "white" or" ethical " hackers-crackers who conduct attacks on certain objects in order to then demonstrate to their owners the "holes"found in them. They also exist in Russia, but their activities are not yet protected by law and can be qualified as a violation of a number of articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
For the benefit of society
The authors of RayV Lite set themselves the goal of forcing chip manufacturers to pay more attention to the security of their products, which, as practice shows, many of them frankly neglect. This is clearly evident in the example of Intel processors, which over the past few years have found a huge number of vulnerabilities, many of which are not fixed. The authors of the project stated that the vast majority of modern chips are completely unprotected from hacking with a laser.
Using the creation of Beaumont and Trowell, you can perform two different classes of attacks on microchips to break them. The first one is called Laser Fault Injection( LFI), and the second one is called Laser Logic State Imaging (LLSI).
RayV Lite assembly
The LFI attack uses a short-term laser pulse to interfere with the processor's transistor charges, "flipping bits" from 1 to 0 or vice versa, writes Wired. In some cases, switching these bits can lead to very serious consequences, which the authors of the device found out in the course of experiments.
For example, for one automotive chip (the name was not disclosed), which was tested by the creators of RayV Lite, a laser failure of the chip at a certain point can prevent a security check that puts the chip's firmware in a protected state, thereby leaving it unprotected and allowing you to easily scan its microcode for vulnerabilities.
The LFI attack can be a problem for owners of hardware crypto wallets, since, according to Wired, the chips used in them are vulnerable to such attacks. So, with the help of LFI, you can cause the chip to fail at the moment when it requests a PIN code to unlock the cryptographic key and gain access to the owner's funds. "You take the chip off the crypto wallet, hit it with a laser at the right moment, and it just assumes you have a PIN," Trowell said.
The LLSI attack offers a lot more possibilities. For example, you can use it to recreate the detailed internal architecture of a chip. This is useful not only for hacking, but also for reverse engineering.
Two attacks and two devices
Hackers plan to release two modifications of RayV Lite, one for each type of attack. Now they have a version ready for LFI, but they intend to make a build suitable for LLSI in the coming months. There are also plans to create a universal version of RayV Lite for both attacks.
The global premiere of RayV Lite will take place as part of the Black Hat Cybersecurity Conference, which will be held in Las Vegas (USA) from August 3 to 8, 2024.
The most expensive components of this device are the laser lens and its microcontroller, each of which costs $100. At the same time, the laser itself is cheap. The Raspberri Pi single-board computer manages everything-the Wired model does not specify, but specifies the price in the amount of $68. This may well turn out to be the latest Raspberry Pi 5, which in the version with 4 GB of RAM costs 48 pounds, or about $62 at the exchange rate on August 2, 2024.
The case of RayV Lite is printed on a 3D printer based on a three-dimensional model, available in the public domain. The code is written from scratch, but also using open-source tools, and will be available to everyone.
