“Do you think your data is safe because your computer isn’t connected to the internet or a network? Wrong,” Andrew Liszewski reports for Gizmodo. “As security researchers recently demonstrated, the sounds of your computer’s hard drive can be used to transmit data from an air-gapped and seemingly well-protected machine.”
“The DiskFiltration hack, demonstrated in this video by security researcher Mordechai Guri of Israel’s Ben-Gurion University, works by controlling the actuator in a hard drive which moves back and forth across the drive’s platters to read and write data,” Liszewski reports. “As the actuator jumps around, it produces subtle sounds.”
“You know that cacophony of sounds when you first boot up a desktop computer?” Liszewski reports. “Part of that noise is coming from the machine’s hard drive, and with the correct malware installed, those sounds can actually leak sensitive data to a nearby air-gapped device, like a smartphone, that knows what to listen for.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
Duh. — Aram Mojtabai