Hackers can steal data via the vibration of cooling fan

Israeli researchers have discovered a novel way for hackers to steal sensitive data from a highly secure computer : touching vibrations from a computer's cooling system fan.

Cyber ​​security research team leader Dr. Mordechai Guri, Ben-Gurion University, Israel, said that data encrypted by hackers into fan vibrations can be transmitted to smartphones located near the computer. pepper.

The malware in the compromised computer transmits signals through vibrations caused on the table. An infected smartphone nearby detects the transmission, decrypts the data and passes it to the attacker via the internet.

"We observed that computers vibrate at a frequency that correlates with the rotation speed of their internal fans," said Dr. Guri. The malware can control computer vibration by manipulating the internal fan speed, he explained. "These inaudible vibrations affect the whole structure on which the computer is installed."

Because the accelerometer sensors in smartphones are not secure, they "can be accessed by any application without requiring user permissions, which makes this attack harder to detect. " he said.

The team said the three measures would help secure a computer system against such an attack. One is to run the CPU continuously at maximum power consumption mode, helping it not to adjust its consumption. Another way is to set the fan speed for both CPU and GPU at a single fixed speed. The third solution would be to limit the CPU to a single clock speed.

Ben-Gurion University's cybersecurity team specializes in what is known as sub-channel attacks. Dr. Guri calls this process AiR-ViBeR . "This malware does not lose data by breaking encryption standards or breaking network firewalls; instead, it encrypts data in vibrations and transmits it to the phone's accelerometer. clever, " he said.

AiR-ViBer relies on vibration variances sensed by an accelerometer capable of detecting motion with a resolution of 0.0023956299 meters per second. There are other means to collect data through sub channels. These include electromagnetism, magnetism, sound, optics and heat.

For example, in 2015, Guri's team introduced BitWhisper, a secret covert channel that allowed a nearby computer to establish two-way communication with another computer by detecting and measuring changes in temperature. .

A year ago, his team also demonstrated the malware extracted data from secured computers to nearby smartphones via FM signals emanating from a display cable.

• Hackers can "listen" sound from the hard drive to steal user data remotely
• 10 attacks by hackers left the most serious consequences in 2015