Paper 2022/1110
Invisible Formula Attacks
Abstract
This brief note introduces a new attack vector applicable to a symbolic computation tool routinely used by cryptographers. The attack takes advantage of the fact that the very rich user interface allows displaying formulae in invisible color or in font size zero. This allows to render some code portions invisible when opened using the tool. We implement a classical fault attack thanks to this deceptive mechanism but other cryptographic or non-cryptographic attacks (e.g. formatting the victim's disk or installing rootkits) can be easily conducted using identical techniques. This underlines the importance of creating malware detection software for symbolic computation tools. Such protections do not exist as of today. We stress that our observation is not a vulnerability in Mathematica but rather a misuse of the rich possibilities offered by the software.
Metadata
- Available format(s)
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PDF
- Category
- Implementation
- Publication info
- Published elsewhere. BlackHat 2022
- Keywords
- Attacks
- Contact author(s)
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david naccache @ ens fr
ofer friedman @ ens fr - History
- 2022-09-15: revised
- 2022-08-27: received
- See all versions
- Short URL
- https://ia.cr/2022/1110
- License
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CC0
BibTeX
@misc{cryptoeprint:2022/1110,
author = {David Naccache and Ofer Yifrach-Stav},
title = {Invisible Formula Attacks},
howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2022/1110},
year = {2022},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1110}
}
