PowerBridge: Covert Air-Gap Exfiltration/Infiltration via Smart Plug

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments:

In the review of the paper entitled « PowerBridge：Covert Air-Gap Exfiltration/Infiltration via Smart Plug" Thus, The paper introduces an innovative method for establishing bidirectional communication over air-gapped networks using smart plugs, a significant advancement over previous one-way communication methods such as PowerHammer, although the author has done excellent work and the paper is well-organized, the author should nonetheless take the following issues into account.

1-      What are the main factors limiting the data transmission rates for both exfiltration and infiltration? Are there any foreseeable methods to increase these rates without compromising the covert nature of the communication?

2-      How easily can the power consumption patterns used for data exfiltration be detected by anomaly detection systems in power monitoring setups? What are the specific characteristics of these patterns that might give them away?

3-      Considering the infiltration scenario where smart plugs control the power supply status, how reliable is this method in environments with fluctuating power quality or interruptions?

4-      The paper mentions that laptops powered by batteries can monitor power supply status. How does the method ensure consistent infiltration when the laptop switches between battery power and direct power supply?

5-      What specific detection algorithms or systems would be most effective in identifying and preventing the type of covert communication proposed? How can organizations implement these measures without significant overhead?

6-      Given the potential for misuse, what ethical considerations should researchers and practitioners keep in mind when developing and testing such methods? How should information about these vulnerabilities be shared with the broader public to prevent malicious exploitation?

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The introduction is very poor and can be enhanced by introducing more clearly what is an air-gapped network, also introducing this in graphical form.
The comparison with other works is quite poor and can be made better, possibly introducing a table.
In the introductive part the aims and methods of this work should be better explained briefly. In the following chapters the reader can get lost in following the flow of the work. The authors should reorganize the paper to make it more clear.
The paper should be made clearer:
introduction and aims, background, more information in the specific topic, methods of this work, results, conclusion. As for now, it is a bit confusionary.

Fig. 23, the smart plug is designed "in this work" not "by the paper".
Please, put spaces before [citations].
Please uniform figures fonts.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thanks for providing a revised version of the manuscript. The authors have used some comments to prepare the new version of the paper. Some comments have been brutally ignored or marked as answered but ignored in the paper. 
A review comment is useful to enchance the quality of the paper. It is adviced to follow those, if relevant.

Check for typos, e.g. line 120 space before (

Comment 2 about the comparison with other works: it is still not clear to the reviewer what is the contribution of this work in comparison to the features of other works. The authors say that Figure 6 has been added for comparison with other covert channels, however, it is not clear what is the comparison that has been introduced.

Comment 7: Please uniform figures fonts. 
This comment is relative to ALL the figures in the text and not only some.

The reviewer is aware of what a covert communication channel is. The authors can introduce the answer given to the comment inside the paper.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf