YHK - yet another hacker news clone

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

38 points hapax_legomena 3 hours ago 16 comments

talon8635 1 hour ago | parent

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 35 minutes ago | parent

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."

taneq 15 minutes ago | parent

We spent so much time talking about the dangers of AI ‘escaping’ when what actually happened is we gave it a scope of work and an internet connection and demanded it get to work.

ranger_danger 1 hour ago | parent

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 52 minutes ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

As a total layman when it comes to air gapping: Would this not be defeated by putting the computer in a faraday cage?

stackghost 37 minutes ago | parent

Yes, Faraday shielding is one of many considerations when building a SCIF or other EMSEC zone.

paxy 9 minutes ago | parent

There is always a way. A program could take control of the LEDs on the PC and export data by flashing them in certain patterns.

andai 1 hour ago | parent

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 46 minutes ago | parent

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

NooneAtAll5 6 minutes ago | parent

I heard that couple decades ago there was a product for "socket internet" - you plugged it into normal wall socket, and it communicated through power wires

superkuh 51 minutes ago | parent

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 45 minutes ago | parent

Meanwhile my WiFi never works

gnabgib 42 minutes ago | parent

Such a cool observation! Gradient Descent