Hacking

DNA Contains Instructions for Biological and Computer Viruses

University of Washington scientists have created an experiment that shows how DNA can be used to not only create biologic viruses, but also viruses that can infect computers.

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is one of the oldest methods for storing information. It is found in almost all living cells and DNA information is used in nature to determine “traits as diverse as the color of a person’s eyes, the scent of a rose, and the way in which bacteria infect a lung cell.
It is comprised of four different “nucleotides,” which combine in different ways to provide genetic instructions for different outcomes. I like to think of it like binary machine code where the combinations of 0’s and 1’s are combined to define a program for a computer to execute. This is probably a common analogy since scientists have been encoding digital data into organic DNA for a while now.
In 2012, Harvard researchers encoded an entire book in DNA. In 2013, researchers at the European Bioinformatics Institute encoded Shakespearean sonnets, digital photos and recording from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech in DNA. University of Washington researchers and Microsoft Research staff collaborated to store an OK Go music video in DNA in 2016. Although this last one may sound frivolous, it is an example that the technology is becoming more capable and easier to work with. While it is unlikely that DNA will replace more traditional digital storage mediums, it will likely find a few use cases for which it is specifically well suited. In other words, we can expect the decoding of DNA information as a regular occurrence. And whenever information is being handled, we should expect the bad guys to try and profit from it in unique ways.
This is exactly what Tadayoshi Kohno at the University of Washington was thinking about when he and his team devised the experiment to encode a malicious virus in DNA — a virus that doesn’t compromise humans, but computers. While much of scientists’ work with DNA happens with organic materials, some of it requires computers to decode the DNA information into a digital format and this is where the research team focused their attack.
[We] “synthesized DNA strands that, after sequencing and post-processing, generated a file; when used as input into a vulnerable program, this file yielded an open socket for remote control“, the authors wrote in their paper titled “Computer Security, Privacy, and DNA Sequencing: Compromising Computers with Synthesized DNA, Privacy Leaks, and More”
The team admits that they created the “best possible environment” in which to test their theory. They changed the source code of the fqzcomp DNA compressor to include a fixed data buffer which would be vulnerable to a buffer overflow attack. The next step was to encode the buffer overflow data into synthetic DNA. Encoding digital information into DNA that uses only four nucleotides with physical restrictions on the combinations is challenging and took many iterations, but the team was eventually able to come up with a viable formula and it was sent to Integrated DNA Technologies for synthesis.
When the vial of DNA was received from the synthesis service, the team now had a computer program vulnerable to the exploit encoded on that DNA and the test was ready to go. They sequenced the DNA samples using the known-vulnerable fqzcomp compressor and 37% of the time the attack was successful — the buffer overflow compromised the computer system and could have granted unauthorized access to the perpetrators.
“[the] attack was fully translated only about 37 percent of the time since the sequencer’s parallel processing often cut it short or—another hazard of writing code in a physical object—the program decoded it backward. (A strand of DNA can be sequenced in either direction, but a code is meant to be read in only one. The researchers suggest in their paper that future, improved versions of the attack might be crafted as a palindrome.)”, reads the Wired Magazine.
Is this a viable attack? It depends on many factors. The bad guys would have to compromise software used in the DNA sequencing and analysis stages like these researchers did. Or they would have to find existing vulnerabilities in the software currently being used (not hard to imagine when you realize how many vulnerabilities exist in all software.) The bad guys would also have to arrange for the target to receive a sample of the specially crafted malicious DNA, or find a vulnerability that could be exploited by known samples that did not require modification. There are a variety of ways the DNA processes could be compromised but for now, they are all complex with a low probability of success. It will take a lot of (financial) motivation or time for malicious researchers to make these attacks viable. But we know it is possible, so we can start to think about the implications now.
We know that if an adversary has control over the data a computer is processing, it can potentially take over that computer,” says Tadayoshi Kohno. “That means when you’re looking at the security of computational biology systems, you’re not only thinking about the network connectivity and the USB drive and the user at the keyboard but also the information stored in the DNA they’re sequencing. It’s about considering a different class of threat.”
About the author:  Steve Biswanger has over 20 years experience in Information Security consulting, and is a frequent speaker on risk, ICS and IoT topics. He is currently Director of Information Security for Encana, a North American oil & gas company and sits on the Board of Directors for the (ISC)2 Alberta Chapter.

 

 

[adrotate banner=”9″] [adrotate banner=”12″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – DNA, malware)

[adrotate banner=”13″]

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.

Recent Posts

American fast-fashion firm Hot Topic hit by credential stuffing attacks

Hot Topic suffered credential stuffing attacks that exposed customers' personal information and partial payment data.…

3 hours ago

Cisco addressed high-severity flaws in IOS and IOS XE software

Cisco addressed multiple vulnerabilities in IOS and IOS XE software that can be exploited to…

17 hours ago

Google: China dominates government exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities in 2023

Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) and Mandiant reported a surge in the number of actively…

23 hours ago

Google addressed 2 Chrome zero-days demonstrated at Pwn2Own 2024

Google addressed two zero-day vulnerabilities in the Chrome web browser that have been demonstrated during…

1 day ago

INC Ransom stole 3TB of data from the National Health Service (NHS) of Scotland

The INC Ransom extortion group hacked the National Health Service (NHS) of Scotland and is threatening…

2 days ago

CISA adds Microsoft SharePoint bug disclosed at Pwn2Own to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) adds a Microsoft SharePoint vulnerability disclosed at the…

2 days ago

This website uses cookies.