Stealing DNA By Phone








8 thoughts on “Stealing DNA By Phone

  1. My main takeaway from this article isn’t the scary reality of side channel attacks, that a simple microphone can extract far more information then one might expect at a first glance isn’t that surprising when one actually starts to listen to different machines.

    Though, that gene sequencing machines are such run of the mill things that we find them at both universities and in industry already is more interesting. Just 5-10 years ago this were complete science fiction after all….

    After all, there isn’t even a Wikipedia article about DNA synthesizer yet.

    1. IIRC, during the 1990’s the CIA warned employees about typing passwords while they were on the phone, as each keyclick on a keyboard has a distinctive sound based on its location on the PCB and inside the plastic shell.

  2. Mossad invented a method to output passwords chars via variation in cooler RPM for a laser-microphone pointing to a window to intercept the noise. The same using hdd led or keyboard leds + a hidden camera. The transfer rate is slow but enough for capturing many interesting passwords in one night.

  3. This would be an exceptionally hard to pull off. Many synthesizer runs have setup QC and method-specific cleaning operations (especially if they are in a regulated environment). While it may be true to determine which solution bottle is being dispensed, many synthesizers are moving towards microfluidics tech meaning this hack will have limited reach for lab-scale applications in the near future. Might have a bigger impact on oligo drug development as they will still use mid-size synthesizers like GE Healthcare’s (now Danaher’s) AKTA oligo pilot system which should in theory still be vulnerable to this attack. These mid-sized units are mostly used for R&D and scale-up ops, and by the time the putative drug is in these labs, the oligo formula has likely already been published. All in all, a very interesting hack for folks in my industry to consider. Nice article!

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