The hackers jumped these supposedly "air-gapped" networks with the same method experts fear could be applied to elections: by penetrating the smaller vendors that serviced the air-gapped technology.
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The lab in Israel specializes in security research on air-gapped systems.
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We are trying to challenge this assumption that air-gapped systems are secure.
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His work also typically makes the unorthodox assumption that an air-gapped target has already been infected with malware by, say, a USB drive, or other temporary connection used to occasionally update software on the air-gapped computer or feed it new data.
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But hardware wallets are "air gapped," meaning not connected by design, until you connect them.
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Experts think the virus was introduced to the air-gapped system by an infected USB stick.
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Researchers found a way to glean data from an air-gapped laptop by modulating the fan.
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That service has the key property of being air gapped from the rest of the internet.
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Another is to gain access to computers that are well-defended or "air-gapped" from the internet.
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The Iranian uranium enrichment systems were air-gapped, meaning there was no physical connection to the Internet.
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In the early 2000s, a SETI researcher proposed decoding messages on air-gapped computers for this reason.
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The user then, hopefully, plugs that infected USB into an air-gapped computer unavailable to the CIA.
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Last July, Wikileaks released documents allegedly demonstrating how the CIA used malware to infect air-gapped machines.
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In West Virginia and many other states, the database is "air gapped" — cut off from public access.
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Many election machines are what is know as "air-gapped," meaning they are never connected to the internet.
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For example, researchers have recovered the data from an air gapped computer by listening to it's hard drive fan.
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The system will be "air gapped," meaning that it will be disconnected from any external network to prevent unauthorized access.
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But election management systems are supposed to be air gapped, without any connection to the internet or to other systems.
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Hacking air-gapped machines—computers that are not connected to the internet, so theoretically less vulnerable—is always pretty interesting.
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Energetic Bear managed to get into the control rooms of power stations, even into supposedly secure "air-gapped" networks, via vendors.
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Fifth, the database should be "air-gapped," meaning it should be held on a segmented network not connected to the internet.
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All voting machines are supposed to be "air-gapped" (not connected to the internet), making them much harder to infiltrate from afar.
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In 2015, Israeli researchers demonstrated how to hack an air-gapped computer using a GSM network, electromagnetic waves, and a feature phone.
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Specialists at The Times set up a number of "air-gapped" laptops — disconnected from the internet — in a windowless, padlocked meeting room.
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Election systems are supposed to be air-gapped — disconnected from the internet and from other machines that might be connected to the internet.
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Pro: it doesn't need an active network or internet connection, making it perfect as a failsafe communication system or for secure, air-gapped devices.
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Which brings up the interesting question of whether future spacecraft will need to be similarly "air-gapped" to prevent any kind of malicious infection.
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We have now evolved from modifying stolen software, to introducing malware into an air-gapped system, to compromising a network connected to the internet.
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Until recently, water systems were typically "air-gapped," meaning they were physically separated from the internet and from any computer connected to the internet.
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The first is to insist their products are "air-gapped," or not connected to the internet, making it difficult for them to be hacked.
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The laptop is a Samsung netbook that's been air gapped, meaning it isn't connected to the internet and thus is unlikely to spread the viruses.
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ALG: And have it backed up and air-gapped from the internet for safety and possibly in a Faraday cage in case you get EMP'ed.
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Sure, if you can afford it, you can decide to place all your crypto funds in a secret air-gapped bunker 30 feet under in Switzerland.
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"Using our method we successfully transmitted data from [an] air-gapped computer without audio hardware, to a smartphone receiver in the same room," the researchers write.
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The researchers at the Cyber Security Research Center highlighted "Brutal Kangaroo" in their paper as a real life example of the fallibility of air-gapped computers.
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The vote tabulation process, which was conducted on a separate, air-gapped machine, was not compromised, according to Sword & Shield, the security firm that investigated the attack.
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The papers point out that air-gapped computer networks are being used by banks to store confidential information and by the military and defense sectors as well.
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Wrong. 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.
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In a new paper, researchers at Israel's Ben Gurion University describe an attack meant to be used against isolated or "air-gapped" machines that wouldn't normally be accessible.
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The attack could even conceivably be used against industrial control systems to shut down processes on so-called "air-gapped" networks, which aren't directly connected to the internet.
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In recent years, air-gapped computers, which are disconnected from the internet so hackers can not remotely access their contents, have become a regular target for security researchers.
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Specifically, he focuses on stealing secrets sensitive enough to be stored on an air-gapped computer, one that's disconnected from all networks and sometimes even shielded from radio waves.
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There's a silver lining there: Before being air-gapped and entering into its classified operations, El Capitan will have a "shakeout period" during which others will have access to it.
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America's second-fastest unit, Sierra, is also scheduled to be air gapped (disconnected from the outside world) next year, so it can be put to use managing the country's nuclear arsenal.
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As Reuters reports, computers in some Singaporean ministries are already disconnected, or "air-gapped," from the web, but security experts doubt that expanding the policy will do much to enhance cybersecurity.
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And any radio-enabled device like a smartphone, Guri warns, should be kept as far as possible from air-gapped devices, even if those phones are carefully stored in a Faraday bag.
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However, it seems that at least some of the machines they wanted to use had been air-gapped for security — meaning they were kept permanently offline to keep them safe from hackers.
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The extraction method, dubbed MAGNETO, works by infecting an "air-gapped" device—a computer that isn't connected to the internet—with a specialized malware called ODINI that regulates that device's magnetic fields.
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But election-management systems and voting machines are supposed to be air-gapped for security reasons—that is, disconnected from the internet and from any other systems that are connected to the internet.
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The United States and Israel are suspected of being behind the attack, which used portable media to deliver malware to "air gapped" systems, or those with no direct or indirect connections to the internet.
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Most of their previous work has focused on various ways to extract data, such as passwords, from air-gapped systems—using using radio signals, electromagnetic waves, heat emissions, or the fan inside a computer.
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Because the Iranian computers were "air-gapped" — that is, not connected to the global internet — once the bug was inside the Iranian system, delivered through porn-laden thumb drives, it was on its own.
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Now, researchers from Tel Aviv University and Technion have gone a step further than past efforts, and found a way to steal data from air-gapped machines while their equipment is in another room.
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With the help of portable media to reach an "air gapped" system with no direct or indirect connections to the internet, the attackers were able to destroy about 1,000 centrifuges at the Natanz enrichment facility.
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Though the virus was indeed propagated through portable media, it is unconfirmed whether the media used to breach the 'air-gapped' Iranian control system was a USB drive, a CD, a laptop, or a similar device.
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But Dinch assures me Bitski is using all its own hardware with air-gapped computers that have been stripped of their Wi-Fi cards, and it's taking other secret precautions to prevent anyone from snatching its wallets.
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According to Motherboard, the database is air-gapped, and the list is delivered to parties via "hard drives, CD-ROMs or USB drives"The NEI has since filed a criminal complaint with Mexico's Special Prosecutor's Office for Electoral Crimes.
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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.
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The new report also goes into more detail on the ability of the malware to steal data from hard-to-reach places — including secrecy-focused Virtual Encrypted Networks and networks not connected to the internet, called air-gapped networks.
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America and Israel are thought to have sneaked the devastating Stuxnet virus into Iran's air-gapped uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz around 2007 by planting a USB stick on a worker, who carried it inside and plugged it in.
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It can affix commands being sent to air-gapped networks to USB drives, which then send protected files and data back to the attacker, forcing users to unwittingly carry hidden files back and forth from different computers and spread the malware.
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Once the malware has infected a target, Brutal Kangaroo sets up its own "custom covert network" within the air-gapped computers, and can collect files, survey the victim machines, launch its own executables, and more, according to one of the documents.
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"We go through the most rigorous testing of any part of the election infrastructure," said Hart vice president Peter Lichtenheld, adding that their products are "air-gapped from the internet, so we are the most secure part" of the industry.
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By law, nuclear control systems are segregated, meaning attackers wishing to manipulate the systems that plants use to operate and produce power would need to infiltrate multiple levels of plant networks, including air-gapped interfaces that are disconnected from the Internet.
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So if you ever use zk-SNARKs on the next ZCash release, rest easy knowing that at least part of the network's security was generated on an airborne, air gapped computer and derived its entropy from the quantum mechanics of radioactive decay.
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On January 20, Ryan Pierce and Andrew Miller—a self-described "technology architect" and assistant professor of computer engineering at the University of Illinois, respectively—climbed into Pierce's prop plane with a Geiger counter, some radioactive material from Chernobyl, and an air gapped laptop.
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Personal Info of 650,000 Voters Discovered on Poll Machine Sold on EbayWhen 650 thousand Tennesseans voted in the Memphis area, they probably didn't expect their personal …Read more ReadFor security reasons, election systems are supposed to be air-gapped, or isolated from unsecured networks, including the internet.
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Klaxoon also offers other tools like an interactive whiteboard (remember Smartboards, also in classrooms?) as well as a closed networks for meeting participants that aims to be air-gapped from a broader network so those employees can conduct a meeting in private or if the room isn't available.
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ES&S has long insisted that election-management systems are air-gapped—that is, not connected to the internet or connected to any other system that is connected to the internet—and the company insists to Motherboard that the diagram it provided isn't showing them connected to the internet.
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Worried that "Sasha" would be of interest to the N.S.A., Borman and Stone avoided discussing production details by phone or email — "It was all handwritten notes and long walks in the park," Borman said — and kept the script on air-gapped computers, ones that have never been connected to the internet.
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Mordechai Guri, manager of research and development at the Cyber Security Research Center at Ben-Gurion University, and colleagues at the lab, have previously designed three attacks that use various methods for extracting data from air-gapped machines—methods involving radio waves, electromagnetic waves and the GSM network, and even the heat emitted by computers.
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In the past two years a group of researchers in Israel has become highly adept at stealing data from air-gapped computers—those machines prized by hackers that, for security reasons, are never connected to the internet or connected to other machines that are connected to the internet, making it difficult to extract data from them.
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For example, while penetrating an air-gapped system would be difficult, nuclear plants are not impervious to insider threats; a person working in a plant could put a virus directly into the network, as was demonstrated in the famous case of Stuxnet, when a foreign intelligence agent posing as an employee reportedly used a thumb drive to inject malware into Iran's centrifuge industrial controls.
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Depending on how close that smartphone "bug" is to the target air-gapped computer, the team could exfiltrate stolen data at between one and 40 bits a second—even at the slowest rate, fast enough to steal a password in a minute, or a 4096-bit encryption key in a little over an hour, as shown in the video below: Plenty of other electromagnetic covert channel techniques have in the past used the radio signals generated by computers' electromagnetism to spy on their operations—the NSA's decades-old implementation of the technique, which the agency called Tempest, has even been declassified.
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An "air-gapped" computer or network is one that has no network interfaces, either wired or wireless, connected to outside networks. Many computers, even when they are not plugged into a wired network, have a wireless network interface controller (WiFi) and are connected to nearby wireless networks to access the Internet and update software. This represents a security vulnerability, so air-gapped computers either have their wireless interface controller permanently disabled or physically removed. To move data between the outside world and the air-gapped system, it is necessary to write data to a physical medium such as a thumbdrive, and physically move it between computers.
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In 2014, researchers introduced "AirHopper", a bifurcated attack pattern showing the feasibility of data exfiltration from an isolated computer to a nearby mobile phone, using FM frequency signals. In 2015, BitWhisper, a covert signaling channel between air-gapped computers using thermal manipulations was introduced. BitWhisper supports bidirectional communication and requires no additional dedicated peripheral hardware. Later in 2015, researchers introduced GSMem, a method for exfiltrating data from air-gapped computers over cellular frequencies.
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Troop Messenger is popular with Defence and other industries for whom data security is paramount and which operate in isolated private networks (Air-Gapped Facilities - those which are not connected to the Internet).
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Guri, G. Kedma, A. Kachlon and Y. Elovici, "AirHopper: Bridging the air-gap between isolated networks and mobile phones using radio frequencies," Malicious and Unwanted Software: The Americas (MALWARE), 2014 9th International Conference on, Fajardo, PR, 2014, pp. 58-67. "BitWhisper",M. Guri, M. Monitz, Y. Mirski and Y. Elovici, "BitWhisper: Covert Signaling Channel between Air-Gapped Computers Using Thermal Manipulations," 2015 IEEE 28th Computer Security Foundations Symposium, Verona, 2015, pp. 276-289. "GSMem" GSMem: Data Exfiltration from Air-Gapped Computers over GSM Frequencies. Mordechai Guri, Assaf Kachlon, Ofer Hasson, Gabi Kedma, Yisroel Mirsky, and Yuval Elovici, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; USENIX Security Symposium 2015 and "Fansmitter" are four techniques introduced by researchers that can leak data from air-gapped computers using electromagnetic, thermal and acoustic emissions.
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The downside is that transferring information (from the outside world) to be analyzed by computers on the secure network is extraordinarily labor-intensive, often involving human security analysis of prospective programs or data to be entered onto air-gapped networks and possibly even human manual re-entry of the data following security analysis. Sophisticated computer viruses for use in cyberwarfare, such as Stuxnet and agent.btz have been designed to infect air-gapped systems by exploiting security holes related to the handling of removable media. The possibility of using acoustic communication has also been demonstrated by researchers.
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Project Sauron, also named Remsec is a computer malware discovered in 2016. It has been spying computers at government and organizations for five years. It can steal encryption keys, collect information from air-gapped computers, and record someone’s keystrokes without being detected.
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The transmission - generated by a standard internal bus - renders the computer into a small cellular transmitter antenna. ProjectSauron malware discovered in 2016 demonstrates how an infected USB device can be used to remotely leak data off of an air-gapped computer. The malware remained undetected for 5 years and relied on hidden partitions on a USB drive not visible to Windows as a transport channel between the air-gapped computer and a computer connected to the internet, presumably as a way to share files between the two systems. NFCdrip was the name given to the discovery of stealthy data exfiltration through NFC (Near- field communication) radio abuse and signal detection in 2018.
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Browser isolation began as an evolution of the 'security through physical isolation' cybersecurity model and is also known as the air- gap model by security professionals, who have been physically isolating critical networks, users and infrastructures for cybersecurity purposes for decades. Although techniques to breach 'air-gapped' IT systems exist, they typically require physical access or close proximity to the air-gapped system in order to be effective. The use of an air-gap makes infiltration into systems from the public internet extremely difficult, if not impossible without physical access to the system . The first commercial browser isolation platforms were leveraged by the National Nuclear Security Administration at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories in 2009, when browser isolation platforms based on virtualization were used to deliver non-persistent virtual desktops to thousands of federal government users.
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Julie Bort, Matt Weinberger "Google's Project Vault is a tiny computer for sending secret messages" , Business Insider, NYC May 29, 2015 However, since plaintext input and output are still visible to the host system, malware can monitor conversations in real time. A more robust approach is to isolate all sensitive data to a fully air gapped computer.Whonix Wiki "Air Gapped OpenPGP Key" PGP has been recommended by experts for this purpose: However, as Bruce Schneier points out, Stuxnet developed by US and Israel successfully jumped air gap and reached Natanz nuclear plant's network in Iran.Bruce Schneier "Air Gaps" , Schneier on Security, October 11, 2013 To deal with key exfiltration with malware, one approach is to split the Trusted Computing Base behind two unidirectionally connected computers that prevent either insertion of malware, or exfiltration of sensitive data with inserted malware.
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Kwangmyong is maintained by government-related entities. However, large amounts of material from the Internet ends up on Kwangmyong, following processing. Foreigners in North Korea are generally not allowed to access Kwangmyong but may have access to the global Internet. For security reasons networks with Internet and intranet access are air gapped so that computers with Internet access are not housed in the same location as computers with Kwangmyong access.
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Although NFC enables devices to establish effective communication by bringing them within a few centimeters of each other, researchers showed that it can be abused to transmit information at a much longer range than expected - up to 100 meters. In general, malware can exploit various hardware combinations to leak sensitive information from air-gapped systems using "air-gap covert channels".Carrara, Brent (September 2016). “Air-Gap Covert Channels.” Ph. D. Thesis.
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Green building: principles and practices in residential construction. Clifton Park, N.Y.: Delmar Cengage Learning, 2013. 192. Print. A more recent design is the installation of a roof deck with foil-backed foam along with a second deck that is air-gapped away from the foil-backed foam to allow air to flow vertically to a ventilation outlet at the peak of the roof—it is a double deck design with an air gap. This design improves efficiency.
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At the 2015 Black Hat Briefings cybersecurity conference, Cui unveiled a firmware exploit called “Funtenna” which manipulates the electronic processes within common devices like printers, phones, and washing machines in order to create radio signals which could secretly transmit data outside of a secure facility. The attack could even work with devices within an air-gapped system. News outlets such as Ars Technica and Motherboard noted Funtenna's potential for turning infected devices into covert spying tools.
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Librem has been the brand name used by Purism for all of their computer hardware products since the firm's first website in late 2014. The name is based on the French word libre for the English word free as used in the term logiciel libre for free software. Purism devices feature hardware kill switches to allow users to shut off the camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular or mobile broadband modem on devices that have one (or can be purchased air gapped).
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Limitations imposed on devices used in these environments may include a ban on wireless connections to or from the secure network, or similar restrictions on EM leakage from the secure network through the use of TEMPEST or a Faraday cage. Despite a lack of direct connection to other systems, air-gapped networks have been shown to be vulnerable to attack in various circumstances. Scientists in 2013 demonstrated the viability of air gap malware designed to defeat air gap isolation using acoustic signaling. Shortly after that, network security researcher Dragos Ruiu's BadBIOS received press attention.
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The concept represents nearly the maximum protection one network can have from another (save turning the device off). The only way to transfer data between the outside world and the air-gapped system is to copy data on a removable storage medium such as a removable disk or USB flash drive and physically carry the storage to the other system. This access can be more easily controlled. The upside to this is that such a network can generally be regarded as a closed system (in terms of information, signals, and emissions security), unable to be accessed from the outside world.
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Air-gapped networks in which the computer network is separated physically from other networks, specifically those that are less secure, are widely used to protect the networks of military defense systems and critical infrastructure. The air-gap isolation was once thought to be a means of successfully preventing sensitive data from leaking from critical networks; however, some of Elovici's recent research has challenged this, exposing techniques that enable attackers to leak data from these networks via covert channels, including electromagnetic, ultrasonic, thermal, optical channels. In each case, new types of attacks that can bridge the air-gap have been demonstrated.
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Saying "My life is in danger", John Doe insisted that reporters communicate over encrypted channels only and agree that they would never meet face-to-face. SZ also had concerns about security, not only for their source, the leaked documents, and their data, but also for the safety of some of their partners in the investigation living under corrupt regimes who might not want their money-handling practices made public. They stored the data in a room with limited physical access on air gapped computers that were never connected to the Internet. The Guardian also limited access to its journalists' project work area.
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