[Florian] as well as [Xavier Carcelle] started the day at 25C3 by covering power line communication. PLC innovation is not extensive in the US, however has gained popularity in countries like France where it’s included in set-top boxes. PLC lets you produce a regional network utilizing the AC wires in your wall. The team started checking out PLC since in spite of being newer technology, it had a few principles that made it similar to old networks. There’s no segmentation in the wiring, which means it behaves like a layer 2 hub. You get to see all of the web traffic unlike a changed network. most power meters don’t filter out the signal, so it’s possible that you may see your next-door neighbor’s web traffic on your line. [Florian] reports having seen all the web traffic in a six-story building just by plugging in. The wiring likewise acts as a big antenna so you might utilize tempest attacks.
The innovation included is definitely interesting, however they discovered a lack of tools to work with it. They composed FAIFA to fill this gap. It’s currently a command line tool for probing as well as configuring Intellon-based PLC gadgets (Intellon is the majority chip supplier for PLC). You can inquiry gadgets as well as it even has a sniffer mode. Sniffing may not seem fascinating since gadgets that support the HomePlug AV basic utilize encryption, however they’re all shipping from the factory with the exact same default key. In the future, they hope to develop their own open source FPGA based PLC gadget to take even more manage of the system.