Spooky Action at a Distance: Generating Waves over the Wire for Novel C2
summary
A new tool called QuantumCat encodes data as timing, size and port changes rather than payloads, using Scapy/Ethernet/ICMP/UDP/TCP (QUIC-friendly) to send packets as bits; a live demo sends packets across ~30 hops to a US‑West VM and reliably transfers a 6.4 MB executable in ~2 hours. Network sensors that rely on Snort/Zeek session inspection miss it because packets contain no payload; frequency modulation and amplitude modulation methods work and bi‑directional comms are possible, while detection requires expensive behavioral correlation.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (14)
- 0:00Spooky Action at a Distance intro
- 1:05Traditional C2 concerns
- 3:33Detection cross section
- 8:12Layer Four and Five Detection Challenges
- 11:04QuantumCat for covert comms
- 13:15QuantumCat modulation
- 17:43Live demo: frequency mod
- 20:54Testing over 30 hops
- 24:05Amplitude & phase mod
- 28:48GitHub tools & evasion
- 32:19Improving firewall rules
- 34:29Network visibility strategies
- 36:58Detecting QuantumCat challenges
- 38:01Q&A
related talks
31mCommSec D1 - Steganography Ante Portas
48mAir-Gap security
46mCurio Collection of Web Protocols
44mSmashing The State Machine: The True Potential Of Web Race Conditions
21mSee Like a Bat: Using Echo-Analysis to Detect Man-in-the-Middle Attacks in LANs
40mVisualizing Security
38mHiding A Secret Distributed Chat System In 802.11 Management Frames
55mEtherify, sonify: soft tempest at home and on the farm
