Hacking is an activity that has been going on for as long as computers have been around, and with technology getting more and more sophisticated these days, so are hackers. A new malware has now been released that violates privacy by stealing data from the one thing that we thought was fail-safe – the air-gap.
An air-gap is a security feature that is enabled when a computer is disconnected to other computers or networks such as the internet. Its name describes how it functions in that it literally creates a gap of air to ensure that the device is physically isolated. Once thought to be a very effective way of providing protection from hackers, a new malware named ‘Fansmitter‘ has been created that takes over control of the computer’s fan to modify it rotation speed and control the sounds it produces.
The way in which the malware works is by transmitting information to the computer that consists of a preamble and a payload. The preamble is used as a listening device, while the payload encodes the data to be transmitted, ready to picked up by a smartphone or other nearby listening device. In order to disguise the noise change in the fans, researchers used low frequencies that were difficult for humans to detect.
During testing the research team at Ben-Gurion University in Israel, led by Mordechai Guri, were able to able to transmit data from an air-gapped computer to a smartphone in the same room, proving that you don’t need a microphone to be connected to the computer to hack it.
Although this may seem a little worrying, further studies are going on to the team to try and combat this issue. Some possibilities in ways to do this include computers generating so much background noise that it would be impossible to record anything or by replacing current fans with silent ones. But, whatever techniques they try, there will always be someone out there looking to obtain information unlawfully and will keep creating ways to do it. Unfortunately, if something can be made, it can also be broken.
More News To Read
- The World’s Tallest Solar Tower Hopes To Be Completed By 2017
- Breast Cancer Detection Made Easier With Artificial Intelligence
- Apple is Planing To Stop Illegal Recordings With This New Patent
- Scientists Uncover Truths About the Early Solar System
- Scientists Discover Brain Vessel Disease Links To Alzheimer’s
