TimeTravel: Real-time Timing Drift Attack on System Time Using Acoustic Waves
Jianshuo Liu
34th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security '25) · Day 2 · Hardware Security 2
In a groundbreaking presentation at USENIX Security, Jianshuo Liu unveiled "TimeTravel," a novel physical vulnerability that allows malicious actors to manipulate a device's internal system time using precisely engineered acoustic waves. This research, a collaborative effort between the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Virginia Tech, exposes a critical flaw in **Real-Time Clock (RTC)** circuits, the ubiquitous components responsible for timekeeping in countless embedded devices. The significance of this work lies in its demonstration of a contactless and non-invasive method to alter fundamental timing mechanisms, a capability that could have profound implications across various sectors.
AI review
TimeTravel is exactly the kind of research that makes hardware vendors lose sleep: a contactless, non-invasive, physics-grounded attack on a component so fundamental that nobody thought to question it. The work is rigorous, the demo is real, and the threat model is immediately applicable to medical devices, ICS, and IoT — sectors where timing integrity isn't just a convenience, it's safety-critical.