Hacking a computer by getting them to listen to a Ham Radio station broadcast seems like the plot of a bad movie or TV series about ‘hackers’ but this is not a fictional story. It is now in fact possible to hack a WinXP & Windows 10 computer over the air, All we need to do is ensure that the target is using WinARPS on their computer to listen to the broadcast and then they are fair game.
I am in awe of this finding because figuring out how to generate radio packets that will cause a memory overflow/corruption and then figure out who to generate the packets in a way that allows you to get RCE (Remote Code Execution) requires phenomenal hacking skills and understanding of the underlying systems.
WinARPS is unlikely to get a fix for the issue because the author no longer has an environment to build/test the software as the last update to the code was back in 2013. However the author is aware of the problem and who knows they might get the environment working again and fix the issue.
Video demo of the issue on a Windows 10 machine (Credit: Coalfire.com)
This bug does show us that we can have the world’s most protected / isolated system but if there is any way to get external information/input then the system can potentially be attacked.
You can read the full walk through of the process at: Hacking Ham Radio: WinAPRS – Part 5
– Suramya