TY - GEN
T1 - GPSBuster
T2 - 31st ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2024
AU - Li, Yue
AU - Yan, Zhenxiong
AU - Jin, Wenqiang
AU - Ning, Zhenyu
AU - Liu, Daibo
AU - Qin, Zheng
AU - Liu, Yu
AU - Zhu, Huadi
AU - Li, Ming
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
PY - 2024/12/9
Y1 - 2024/12/9
N2 - The escalating threat of hidden GPS tracking devices poses significant risks to personal privacy and security. Featured by their miniaturization and misleading appearances, GPS devices can be easily disguised in their surroundings making their detection extremely challenging. In this paper, we propose a novel side-channel-driven detection system, GPSBuster, leveraging electromagnetic radiation (EMR) emitted by GPS trackers. Our feasibility studies and hardware analysis reveal that unique EMR patterns associated with the tracker’s operation, stemming from the quartz oscillator, local oscillator, and mixer in the Mixed-Signal on Chip (MSoC) system. Nevertheless, as a side-channel leakage, EMRs can be extremely weak and suffer from the ambient noise interference, rendering the detection impractical. To address these challenges, we develop the signal processing techniques with noise removals and a dual-dimensional folding mechanism to accumulate the spectrum energy and protrude the EMR patterns with high Signal-to-Noise Ratios (SNR). Our detection prototype, built with a portable HackRF One device, allows users to perform a scan-to-detect manner and achieves an overall success rate of 98.4% on top-10 selling GPS trackers under various testing cases. The maximum detection range is 0.61m.
AB - The escalating threat of hidden GPS tracking devices poses significant risks to personal privacy and security. Featured by their miniaturization and misleading appearances, GPS devices can be easily disguised in their surroundings making their detection extremely challenging. In this paper, we propose a novel side-channel-driven detection system, GPSBuster, leveraging electromagnetic radiation (EMR) emitted by GPS trackers. Our feasibility studies and hardware analysis reveal that unique EMR patterns associated with the tracker’s operation, stemming from the quartz oscillator, local oscillator, and mixer in the Mixed-Signal on Chip (MSoC) system. Nevertheless, as a side-channel leakage, EMRs can be extremely weak and suffer from the ambient noise interference, rendering the detection impractical. To address these challenges, we develop the signal processing techniques with noise removals and a dual-dimensional folding mechanism to accumulate the spectrum energy and protrude the EMR patterns with high Signal-to-Noise Ratios (SNR). Our detection prototype, built with a portable HackRF One device, allows users to perform a scan-to-detect manner and achieves an overall success rate of 98.4% on top-10 selling GPS trackers under various testing cases. The maximum detection range is 0.61m.
KW - Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR)
KW - Privacy Protections
KW - Side-channel
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85215524110&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3658644.3690362
DO - 10.1145/3658644.3690362
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85215524110
T3 - CCS 2024 - Proceedings of the 2024 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security
SP - 3302
EP - 3316
BT - CCS 2024 - Proceedings of the 2024 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security
Y2 - 14 October 2024 through 18 October 2024
ER -