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Hack Air-Gapped Computers Using Heat
An anonymous reader writes Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers have discovered a new method to breach air-gapped computer systems called "BitWhisper," which enables two-way communications between adjacent, unconnected PC computers using heat. BitWhisper bridges the air-gap between the two computers, approximately 15 inches apart that are infected with malware by using their heat emissions and built-in thermal sensors to communicate. It establishes a covert, bi-directional channel by emitting heat from one PC to the other in a controlled manner.
Also at Wired.
...welcome our infrared overlords.
Film at 11:00
This article is just a bunch of hot air.
they didn't "hack" the machine using heat!
they gained control of both machines ahead of time, and THEN used heat (etc) to exfil data.
they didn't gain control of an otherwise stock computer using heat over air gap. stop saying "hack".
But how did the malware get on BOTH of the computers in the first place? TFA totally avoids that question.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Governments and business have been doing this for centuries, communicating by nothing more than hot air.
haha
With chips being so complicated these days, who audits them all? What's to stop a manufacturer being exploited and this kind of malware being as standard in a lot of silicon? However, if that's the case then a more traditional attack would be warranted - the data rate here is awful.
Not hack. They have not infected computers using thermal energy. They just demonstrated slow (very slow) communication between two computers using heat and heat sensors. It uses a tremendous amount of battery power of little to no purpose, since both computers need to already have the software on them... stenography would be a more appropriate communication method (hiding communication in seemingly-innocuous em traffic).
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
As evidenced by them calling that gap between the computers 15 inches.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
This is totally Zalewalski shit.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
So, can I use a space heater to extend the range of this new wireless technology?
Both computers need to be compromised with the researcher's malware for this to work (for anyone who didn't RTFA). Still a really innovative result.
Just install a mains-powered fan between the two computers.
the air-gapped system must already be infected. So while this is cute and all, on its own it does nothing.
Or you could just go in with lots of guys with guns, take the computers, and dump the bodies at sea.
Now all those viruses can finally give your computer proper disease symptoms.
This makes my old 1200 baud modem look absolutely speedy.. We are talking about bit rates just around 10 per HOUR. A 256 bit key would take more than a day to transmit. Where this looks cool (er or hot depending on the bit state) it's about useless. Not to mention that it requires line of sight between the two machines, and if you have LOS, why not just use the IR device how it was designed to work?
Now, i seem to be missing something here...
Please enlighten Me, how this is news ?
C'mon ffs, Stalin was spied this way from 50-70 meters using Ir produced by His windows (the Idiot was always yelling) (200ft for those of you who don't buy Royale with cheese).
If your server were air-gapped so totally that all transfers to and from it had to be with a human, malware could just as easily be transmitted by flash drive.
Wow! We have hardwire, ethernet, wifi, bluetooth, infrared, optical.... now heat to transfer data.
I guess the only thing missing is smell data transfer and smoke signals.
Maybe a good kickstarter project...
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
This site would not be fit for a bird cage floor, if it were printed on paper.
Mildly curious how they intend to deal with normal fluctuations in heat when you don't even want to communicate. I don't think I'll take the time to read the unreleased paper describing their technique when it's all rubbish anyway.
Like most recent technical advances, this is merely a corollary of pre-existing xkcd research.
Sorry, I forgot there are ads on the Web; I use Lynx.
Is there an RFC for IP over heat?
Have gnu, will travel.
Protect against this hack by placing a hot coffee beside your computer. Only $69.99 per cup of coffee.
So... everybody complaining about how the software is supposed to have gotten onto the airgapped box has a serious lack of imagination:
Scenario 1: I work for Three Letter Agency, but I'm really a double agent. I know they're carefully checking the airgapped box on a daily basis, but I know they aren't bothering to check its heat emissions, so I set my desk up so that the airgapped box is 15 inches from my email computer, and point them at each other. I install the software on both boxen and set my email computer to email me as soon as the private keys are finished downloading. I then become a model employee for several months, before one day I disappear, and later that day awful things start happening.
Scenario 2: I work for Three Letter Agency, but I'm really stupid. I got this cool BlueCoat thumb drive from a conference I went to, and today I have a problem... I *really* need to move a file from the airgapped box to my email box, both of which sit on my desk. So, eh, what the hell, as long as I plug the thumb drive into the airgapped box first and never plug it back in there after it's touched any other machine, what could it hurt, right? So, I plug it in, move the file to my email computer, and go on with my day. Several months later big guys with guns show up at my desk and ask me a lot of uncomfortable questions about being a double agent. I don't know what they're talking about, but apparently several private keys have been emailed from my email computer to various unsavory characters. It doesn't look so good for me.
Using either attack vector (or any other attack vector), the airgapped box can exfiltrate data quietly using this thermal hack. Specifying which attack vector is beyond the scope of TFA, so it's beyond me why so many posters have a problem with them not specifying. It's not even like this hasn't happened before... Stuxnet relied on operators being stupid (or evil) enough to stick their USB drives into airgapped machines.
Air-gap blocking cubicles/carrels to block heat/audio/EMF transmissions?
Or more direct ventilation/white noise/random EMF generators?
Variants of those would be cheap enough, and easy enough to implement.
FWIW
Heat, light, ... whether electromagnetic or mechanical, you got waves, we'll talk.
Of course, it requires the computer to be compromised first . . . but once compromised it can turn lights on and off all over your house!
In security terms, "air gap" should be taken to mean "direct communications gap".
If two machines an "talk" to each other without involving a human or a third-party computer* to do your dirty work for you.
--
*If the third-party computer is being used "in real time" it doesn't count as a "direct communications gap." However, if the computer hijacks the local router in the stand-alone network so that the next time it is hooked to an external network, it does bad things on behalf of the evil computer, that would be an example of "jumping the direct communications gap".
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Hack the planet! With heat! Wait a minute...
Actually figuring that all of these "hacks" require physical access to the computer in question in the first place, building in an ethernet over powerline module into a power supply and hooking it into the computers undoubtedly built in Ethernet or wiring a usb Ethernet adapter into the supply along side said powerline adapter would probaby be the most effective way at present to bypass an airgapped computer without anyone becoming immediately aware. Couple a modified power supply with some malware and you might even be able to skip the usb angle.
Of course it would in theory be fairly easy to counter by adding some sort of additional filtering to the buildings power lines. Maybe even actual powerline scramblers.
Guess the bottom line is a computer is only as secure as the least trustworthy person who accesses it.
Using heat. Lots of it. I'd call it "fire".
somebody breaks wind.
If you have to get the computer that close to the machine you want to hack, then you could just drop by occasionaly and connect a cable/wifi to it and do a data dump.
Replace your wifi. Right??