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Malware Encoded in DNA Can Hack Gene-Sequencing Software

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21–30 of 48 posts

Re: Malware Encoded in DNA Can Hack Gene-Sequencing Software

#22

A friend showed me that one of those NCIS crime shows already did this. https://www.themarysue.com/malware-uploaded-from-bone-bones/ Malware is 3d printed on to a bone they scan in or something. Reality imitating art I guess. What a world we live in.

Or the Season 3 primer of Rick and Morty where Rick invents a fictional backstory with the secret the federation was looking for replaced with exploit code.

Re: Malware Encoded in DNA Can Hack Gene-Sequencing Software

#23
(As I previously contacted the authors about) - this attack has already been demonstrated by a very influential VXer, Second Path To Hell, in the 4th issue of the Valhalla zine: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PoFK8uf...

Cool to see it getting academic "recognition" though!

Re: Malware Encoded in DNA Can Hack Gene-Sequencing Software

#24
post #6

> "Rather than exploit an existing vulnerability in the fqzcomp program, as real-world hackers do, they modified the program's open-source code to insert their own flaw allowing the buffer overflow." So really, this is not as interesting as the headline would have you believe. Storing data in DNA is nothing new, and these researchers are just using it as input to a program that was deliberately written to improperly…

Whats interesting is just the idea that you should sanitize ALL inputs, no matter how unlikely it is that the input could be malicious.

Though, really, is that interesting? Yes, you should treat all input data as data no matter where it came from. And you should have checks in place to reject any data that is out of size/whatever constraints for your software.

And for the love of secure software, never blindly execute code from a serialized source without damned good reasons for thinking that source is safe.

Re: Malware Encoded in DNA Can Hack Gene-Sequencing Software

#26
post #25

It makes me wonder if you could create a physical scene that, when photographed by a digital camera, exploited the camera.

Not a digital camera, but I had once written some poor vision processing code that would segfault when it recognized a certain pattern. It was interesting to think about, that I could break my program by showing it a pciture.

Re: Malware Encoded in DNA Can Hack Gene-Sequencing Software

#27
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats interesting is just the idea that you should sanitize ALL inputs, no matter how unlikely it is that the input could be malicious.

Though, really, is that interesting? Yes, you should treat all input data as data no matter where it came from. And you should have checks in place to reject any data that is out of size/whatever constraints for your software. And for the love of secure software, never blindly execute code from a serialized source without damned good reasons for thinking that source is safe.

>Though, really, is that interesting?

Yes. Trusting human DNA is something that WILL absolutely, 100%, no-doubt-about it happen in the future and you will hear about it. People are good at finding ways to screw things up.

Re: Malware Encoded in DNA Can Hack Gene-Sequencing Software

#28
retarded useless research. Just the same principles as any exploit on an arbitrary interface.

Just ask yourself, who would build a dns sequencying laboratory and be able to sequence dna would want to hack a dna sequencing lab.... obviously they already know how it works.... can't they spend some time on researching a solution to an actual problem?

Re: Malware Encoded in DNA Can Hack Gene-Sequencing Software

#30
post #6

> "Rather than exploit an existing vulnerability in the fqzcomp program, as real-world hackers do, they modified the program's open-source code to insert their own flaw allowing the buffer overflow." So really, this is not as interesting as the headline would have you believe. Storing data in DNA is nothing new, and these researchers are just using it as input to a program that was deliberately written to improperly…

Whats interesting is just the idea that you should sanitize ALL inputs, no matter how unlikely it is that the input could be malicious.

I remember that perl has (had?) a feature where all variables would be "tainted". Using a tainted variable would make the program exit in an error and the only way to clean them is to pass them through a regex.
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