Client-Side Attacks on Live-Streaming Services Using Grid Computing

Due to the recent activation of non-face-to-face services under the influence of covid-19, live streaming services are rapidly increasing. However, despite the rise of these live streaming platforms, there are still no cases of research into the security issues of the system infrastructure. We have researched client-side attacks on software that uses grid computing and compared and analyzed three of the most famous live streaming platforms in Korea. As a result we found a total of 13 vulnerabilities in these platforms.

Grid computing technology in live streaming services is a system architecture for network load balancing that occur when real-time video is transmitted. In grid computing technology, A client receive the streaming video data from the server and forward that streaming data to the other clients thereby reducing the load on the server. Platforms that provide these services are sending and receiving a large number of personal information data, including video data, as mediated by clients. These data are important security assets and should not be forged or tampered with by malicious hackers.Through analysis of Korea’s largest streaming platforms, we could identify the presence of a variety of attack surfaces and we did successfully exploit in these attack surfaces that including whether streaming data is tampered, authentication about the sender, and some privileged tasks.

As a result, we were able to find 5 common attack surfaces and structural differences, and found the vulnerabilities based on them. The vulnerabilities we found was that first, the attacker can alter the victim’s screen without any user interaction. Second, an unauthorized person can steal the secret channel’s video that only authorized users can watch. Third, we were able to obtain an administrator privilege shell of the streaming service user system by bypassing the integrity verification of the update file. Finally, vulnerabilities such as privacy exposure and DoS exist, and we also validate the risks of these vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities are more fatal in that an attacker can target a large number of unspecified clients watching the same broadcast caused by grid computing.

In this presentation, we will explain the cause of these attacks, and analysis methodology of streaming platforms and we will show you the every attacks demo video.