Vulnerable Building Alarm Systems

Many Window, Door and Motion detectors can be ordered to “pay no attention to the man climbing in the window” by someone carrying a $10 radio jammer, or $300 Software Defined Radio, which can also simulate any alarm event. Security professionals need to be alerted when someone attempts to jam any part of their alarm system. To learn more about exposing the vulnerable building alarms sensors and their systems operating in your environment read our Bastille data sheets or request a Bastille demo.

Key Takeaways

• Alarm systems have gone wireless to save on copper and cabling, but many vendors implemented the radio links insecurely
• An attacker can jam a sensor’s frequency so a door or window opening never reaches the control panel
• An attacker can also spoof a sensor to trigger a false alarm and divert security as a diversion
• Bastille can inventory these devices and detect unauthorized interference or jamming of the alarm network

Video Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hello. My name is Balint Seeber, and I'm the Director of Vulnerability Research at Bastille. I'd like to talk to you about wireless alarm systems. Traditionally, alarm systems have been wired so that you have one master control system, the control panel, and then you have wires going to all of the different sensors, such as windows and doors and so on. And if any of those sensors are actuated or activated, that signal is sent via copper wire back to the main unit.

This can obviously be installed within people's homes and also within the corporate environment to detect unauthorized access to various facilities and rooms. Due to the advent of cheap wireless radios and radio technology, many alarm systems have been going themselves wireless. The advantage there is reducing cost, because you don't need to actually install all of that copper, all of the cabling anymore. You can have these remote sensors communicate wirelessly to the main control panel.

The issue there is that many vendors have actually implemented this in a very insecure fashion, which means that it's possible to spoof sensors or completely block the radio communication. So we might open a door or a window or access something that would set the sensor off. It would attempt to call home and say, hey, just want to let you know that this door has been opened, but the control unit won't actually ever hear it because that frequency has been jammed.

Or if you wanted to set something off and say, divert the attention of some security, you could set off a remote sensor just by pretending to be that and saying, hey, this door's been opened, and then create a diversion and then do something else. So the issue there is, again, putting products to market that have not been vetted properly in terms of their security and the implementation of the wireless protocol that's used between the radios.

And with the Bastille solution, you can actually inventory these devices and detect whether or not there is some unauthorized or malicious interference with the existing network. Thanks very much for listening. If you'd like to learn more, please visit our website. [MUSIC PLAYING] PLAYING]