Leveraging Software-Defined Radios at DEFCON: Enhancing Security or Raising Concerns?

Lesson learned from DEFCON 32.

Participating in this year's DEFCON event, I was impressed by the new hotel and conference venue. However, the most notable shift from previous years was a significant increase in the use of software-defined radios for conducting reconnaissance on the wireless attack surface.

Our AirShield Wireless Airspace Defense platform detected 1168 suspicious cellular towers and more. The most common attacks included Wi-Fi pineapples, which mimic legitimate networks to trick guests into connecting to malicious ones; KARMA attacks targeting multiple authorized wireless networks with captive portals; and fake base station attacks with rogue cell towers posing as legitimate base stations.

Fortunately, with the AirTermination technique and our free Android RF Threat Hunting Tacker application, all of these attacks were prevented, further proving the critical need for continuous, 24/7 monitoring.