GRCon21 - Rampart Communications: Cryptographic Modulation: Zero-Attack-Surface Wireless

Presented by Keith Palmisano at GNU Radio Conference 2021 Wireless communication is the fabric of modern connectivity, but no one thinks of wireless as inherently secure. Fundamentally, it’s a means of easily increasing access and mobility, but as much as we want high-speed no-drop 5G/wifi/bluetooth connectivity everywhere, that same coverage area is attack surface. In BlackHat USA 2021 alone, there were 8 talks covering remote/baseband attacks; and the GRCon audience knows a thing or two about intercepting signals out of the air. In this talk, I’ll briefly cover the history and current state of physical layer security (PLS): the theory and techniques to secure a waveform as it is modulated. True PLS can eliminate the threat of baseband exploitation, eavesdropping, replay, even fuzzing -- and all other attacks at ‘higher’ layers. I’ll demonstrate a (world-first) cryptographic modulation, and if the demo gods are kind, keen radio hackers can try their hand at intercepting. This talk is a combination of digital signals processing, cryptography, network defense, and protocol design; so there’s something for everyone. https://events.gnuradio.org/event/8/