https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.03688 close this message arXiv smileybones icon Giving Week! Show your support for Open Science by donating to arXiv during Giving Week, October 24th-28th. DONATE Skip to main content Cornell University We gratefully acknowledge support from the Simons Foundation and member institutions. arxiv logo > cs > arXiv:2210.03688 [ ] Help | Advanced Search [All fields ] Search arXiv logo Cornell University Logo [ ] GO quick links * Login * Help Pages * About Computer Science > Cryptography and Security arXiv:2210.03688 (cs) [Submitted on 7 Oct 2022] Title:A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Spreading Deadly Pathogens Under the Disguise of Popular Music Authors:Anomadarshi Barua, Yonatan Gizachew Achamyeleh, Mohammad Abdullah Al Faruque Download PDF Abstract: A Negative Pressure Room (NPR) is an essential requirement by the Bio-Safety Levels (BSLs) in biolabs or infectious-control hospitals to prevent deadly pathogens from being leaked from the facility. An NPR maintains a negative pressure inside with respect to the outside reference space so that microbes are contained inside of an NPR. Nowadays, differential pressure sensors (DPSs) are utilized by the Building Management Systems (BMSs) to control and monitor the negative pressure in an NPR. This paper demonstrates a non-invasive and stealthy attack on NPRs by spoofing a DPS at its resonant frequency. Our contributions are: (1) We show that DPSs used in NPRs typically have resonant frequencies in the audible range. (2) We use this finding to design malicious music to create resonance in DPSs, resulting in an overshooting in the DPS's normal pressure readings. (3) We show how the resonance in DPSs can fool the BMSs so that the NPR turns its negative pressure to a positive one, causing a potential \textit{leak} of deadly microbes from NPRs. We do experiments on 8 DPSs from 5 different manufacturers to evaluate their resonant frequencies considering the sampling tube length and find resonance in 6 DPSs. We can achieve a 2.5 Pa change in negative pressure from a $\sim$7 cm distance when a sampling tube is not present and from a $\sim$2.5 cm distance for a 1 m sampling tube length. We also introduce an interval-time variation approach for an adversarial control over the negative pressure and show that the \textit{forged} pressure can be varied within 12 - 33 Pa. Our attack is also capable of attacking multiple NPRs simultaneously. Moreover, we demonstrate our attack at a real-world NPR located in an anonymous bioresearch facility, which is FDA approved and follows CDC guidelines. We also provide countermeasures to prevent the attack. Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) Cite as: arXiv:2210.03688 [cs.CR] (or arXiv:2210.03688v1 [cs.CR] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2210.03688 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Anomadarshi Barua [view email] [v1] Fri, 7 Oct 2022 16:49:36 UTC (5,427 KB) Full-text links: Download: * PDF * Other formats [by-4] Current browse context: cs.CR < prev | next > new | recent | 2210 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations * NASA ADS * Google Scholar * Semantic Scholar a export bibtex citation Loading... Bibtex formatted citation x [loading... ] Data provided by: Bookmark BibSonomy logo Mendeley logo Reddit logo ScienceWISE logo (*) Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools [ ] Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) [ ] Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) [ ] scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) ( ) Code & Data Code and Data Associated with this Article [ ] arXiv Links to Code Toggle arXiv Links to Code & Data (What is Links to Code & Data?) ( ) Demos Demos [ ] Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) ( ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools [ ] Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) [ ] Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) ( ) About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs and how to get involved. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?) * About * Help * Click here to contact arXiv Contact * Click here to subscribe Subscribe * Copyright * Privacy Policy * Web Accessibility Assistance * arXiv Operational Status Get status notifications via email or slack