Malware Encoded in DNA Can Hack Gene-Sequencing Software | Hacker News Reader

Malware Encoded in DNA Can Hack Gene-Sequencing Software

wired.com

157 pointssprucely46 comments

> "Rather than exploit an existing vulnerability in the fqzcomp program, as real-world hackers do, they modified the program's open-source code to insert their own flaw allowing the buffer overflow."

So really, this is not as interesting as the headline would have you believe. Storing data in DNA is nothing new, and these researchers are just using it as input to a program that was deliberately written to improperly handle that data.

Whats interesting is just the idea that you should sanitize ALL inputs, no matter how unlikely it is that the input could be malicious.

Though, really, is that interesting? Yes, you should treat all input data as data no matter where it came from. And you should have checks in place to reject any data that is out of size/whatever constraints for your software.

And for the love of secure software, never blindly execute code from a serialized source without damned good reasons for thinking that source is safe.

>Though, really, is that interesting?

Yes. Trusting human DNA is something that WILL absolutely, 100%, no-doubt-about it happen in the future and you will hear about it. People are good at finding ways to screw things up.

Sorry, the interesting like there was supposed to refer to the advice of always sanitize inputs. That, by itself is interesting.

Exploring ways it can hurt you in DNA? Yeah, fun thought experiment.

I remember that perl has (had?) a feature where all variables would be "tainted". Using a tainted variable would make the program exit in an error and the only way to clean them is to pass them through a regex.

Tainted is a terribly flawed concept unfortunately. At least the way it's implemented normally.

Strings are never universally tainted. They're tainted for a specific purpose. One language will treat backticks as a string quote, another as a subshell substitution. One will think $ is ok, another will interpolate the string. But in most cases I've seen, tainted flag is just used for "Ah, we quoted the ' in the string - you're safe now" :-(

The concept itself is interesting in its own right and this is still a very innovative proof of concept that combines techniques from biochemistry and computer security.

One of the interesting insights to come out of this is that to ensure a higher probability that the sequencer reads the code correctly, it should be a palindrome.

I'm not sure exactly what you were expecting, but the title seems suitable to me.

1. Gene sequence injects malware to take control of DNA sequencer. 2. Compromised sequencer searches local network for DNA synthesisers. 3. Malware modifies synthesiser software to insert novel retrovirus into output DNA. 3. Wait for DNA to be executed inside a cell.

Stuxnet for DNA.

While this is cool, it just seems like a clunky version of an actual virus.

this is the plot of a sci-fi novel waiting to happen.

Change Agent by Daniel Suarez is somewhat close:

In 2045 Interpol's Genetic Crime Division grapples with a new type of crime: illicit genetic editing -- and it isn't long before the fight gets personal.

It makes me wonder if you could create a physical scene that, when photographed by a digital camera, exploited the camera.

There's ongoing work in adversarial examples for neural networks. This could conceivably be used to exploit self-driving cars, making it see things that aren't there.

Not a digital camera, but I had once written some poor vision processing code that would segfault when it recognized a certain pattern. It was interesting to think about, that I could break my program by showing it a pciture.

I'm reminded of David Langford's "basilisks":

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm

[edit] more in the series:

http://ansible.uk/writing/c-b-faq.html

http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/different-kinds-of...

Or a kind of message or language that when seen by a human or processed by a brain can crash or exploit it ...

It's also the plot of a good book:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash

You can use adversarial neural networks to make a special picture that looks like noise or junk, but a certain neural network will recognize e.g. a dog in it. You basically train the ANN to make something that the other NN classifies as dog, but humans don't.

I often wonder if you could do that with humans. I don't think you can crash a human brain a la Snow Crash or Basilisk, but I think it is plausible to craft an abstract picture that creates fear, arousal, or some other "primitive" response.

> but I think it is plausible to craft an abstract picture that creates fear, arousal, or some other "primitive" response.

Visit a modern art museum - I think one can find many examples.

A friend showed me that one of those NCIS crime shows already did this.

https://www.themarysue.com/malware-uploaded-from-bone-bones/

Malware is 3d printed on to a bone they scan in or something.

Reality imitating art I guess.

What a world we live in.

Or the Season 3 primer of Rick and Morty where Rick invents a fictional backstory with the secret the federation was looking for replaced with exploit code.

> we see a character’s computer burst into flames

If we can just get malware that can prompt a personal computer to burst into flames.

With thermal throttling, simply stopping the fans and running processors at 100% may not be enough to HCF anymore.

The infamous old video from Tom's Hardware Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxNUK3U73SI "What happens when the CPU cooler is removed?"

You could hop from the PC to something like a PLC and sabotage an industrial process (like stuxnet)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chase_(Star_Trek:_The_Ne...

This reminds me of the William Gibson short story, "New Rose Hotel", for some reason.

"The diskette in my hand. Rain on the river. I knew, but I couldn't face it. I put the code for that meningial virus back into your purse and lay down beside you.
So Moenner died, along with other Hosaka researchers. Including Hiroshi. Chedanne suffered permanent brain damage.

Hiroshi hadn't worried about contamination. The proteins he punched for were harmless. So the synthesizer hummed to itself all night long building a virus to the specifications of Maas Biolabs GmbH. Maas. Small, fast, ruthless -- All Edge."

Written in 1981.

I miss cyberspace. So much potential.

Little Bobby Tables grew up...

Small earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14979120

(As I previously contacted the authors about) - this attack has already been demonstrated by a very influential VXer, Second Path To Hell, in the 4th issue of the Valhalla zine: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PoFK8uf...

Cool to see it getting academic "recognition" though!

Sanitise your inputs!

I assume the lab was sanitized before extracting the DNA.

Must be the software detecting certain patterns to trigger certain functions. Fake the sequence of patterns and you can control some outcomes.

Malware Encoded in DNA...a virus, so to speak :D

lol, this is such a bad article -- and kind of a stupid experiment. nobody is arbitrarily executing pieces of dna as code in a computer.

it was a simulated buffer overflow, they weren't just executing DNA sequences.

Clickbait joke based on that stupid show

Neat. Future bio hackers.

I wanna be fuzzed by you, just you and nobody else but you.

Technically this might be accurate? Someone could in theory naturally have a specific sequence in their DNA which could cause the same effect. Fuzzing is... oh never mind.

Getting out of alimoney - getting creative. A manual for the rich.

Stop writing stuff in c, a language without even the basics of range checked arrays, actual strings, lists and other collection types.

I have sent her dessert, a very special dessert. I wrote it myself. It starts so simply...

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