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Leaking Secrets from Air-Gap Computers by Spelling Radio Signals from RAM

https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.02292
24•hapax_legomena•3h ago

Comments

talon8635•45m ago
These and other methods are good reason to believe that AI can never be 100% contained, which gives me pause.

The famous air gap case is stuxnet, but there are other technical and biological approaches.

It’s a very weird reality we’ve found ourselves in if you stop, zoom out about, and really take in the gravity of the issues we are grappling with as a human race. Exciting, truly, and a bit nerve wracking.

em3rgent0rdr•4m ago
Not quite 100%, the article gives Faraday cage as an expensive countermeasure: "We analyzed and measured the effect of the Faraday chassis on the RAMBO covert channel using copper foil. This has electric field high Shielding properties (above 100 dB) and magnetic fields. The copper standard width is 1 mm effectively blocks the EMR from the transmitting workstation. However, as noted in the following section, this solution is costly and can not be deployed widely."
ranger_danger•42m ago
Let me guess, a paper written by Mordechai Guri?

It's not even a contest anymore, that man is the heavyweight champ of air-gap security.

yhjc2692•21m ago
Indeed! I was a bit skeptical to see it is a single-author paper (thinking it might be one of those Claude-generated ones), and I appreciate that you pointed out this is somebody worth listening to.
skhr0680•36m ago
As a total layman when it comes to air gapping: Would this not be defeated by putting the computer in a faraday cage?
andai•32m ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)
stackghost•6m ago
Yes, Faraday shielding is one of many considerations when building a SCIF or other EMSEC zone.
andai•35m ago
Does any information leak along the power line? I remember having some device back in the day that let me create a LAN through my apartment's electric wiring.

I'm wondering if anything ends up back there thru the PSU during normal use of a computer, or if the high frequency components get filtered out.

(Though maybe secure computers do things differently with the power as well?)

adityaathalye•15m ago
A rogue PSU could modulate information back over the electrical wire. However getting it out will require doing a physical wiretap on potentially high-voltage electricals. Also, it will likely have to be exfil'd at or across a power transformer sitting outside the data centre. Not sure if the signal will survive long enough (like literally, in line length terms), for exfil to work.

brb reviewing some EE material...

But don't expect much from me... I wanted to do a final year project in Power Line Communication for my electrical engineering undergrad. Then-me decided it was a dead end... cannot go WAN-scale; too much line noise and signal transmission power loss. I did something else with power electronics---I can't remember---but then again, my undergrad was also a dead end :p

superkuh•19m ago
Computers used to come in proper full metal cases. Now they don't. Even when you try to find a metal case for a personal build most cases have giant holes in the side (case windows) acting as slot antennas. And plastic case laptop designs are even worse. Radiated emissions are much easier to achieve at useful intensities these days because of it. Sure, before the conductors going in and out radiated somewhat effectively (and still do). But now even core system components inside are just being let emit without any mitigation.
rbbydotdev•13m ago
Meanwhile my WiFi never works
gnabgib•10m ago
Such a cool observation! Gradient Descent

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Leaking Secrets from Air-Gap Computers by Spelling Radio Signals from RAM

https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.02292
24•hapax_legomena•3h ago•12 comments

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