Exfiltrating Data from Air-Gapped Computers Using Screen Brightness

guest · Feb 6, 2020

Exfiltrating Data from Air-Gapped Computers Using Screen Brightness
No network connection required
February 5, 2020
https://thehackernews.com/2020/02/hacking-air-gapped-computers.html

It may sound creepy and unreal, but hackers can also exfiltrate sensitive data from your computer by simply changing the brightness of the screen, new cybersecurity research shared with The Hacker News revealed.

In recent years, several cybersecurity researchers demonstrated innovative ways to covertly exfiltrate data from a physically isolated air-gapped computer that can't connect wirelessly or physically with other computers or network devices.
When it comes to high-value targets, these unusual techniques, which may sound theoretical and useless to many, could play an important role in exfiltrating sensitive data from an infected but air-gapped computer.
How Does the Brightness Air-Gapped Attack Work?
In his latest research with fellow academics, Mordechai Guri, the head of the cybersecurity research center at Israel's Ben Gurion University, devised a new covert optical channel using which attackers can steal data from air-gapped computers without requiring network connectivity or physically contacting the devices.
In this case, the attacker uses small changes in the LCD screen brightness, which remains invisible to the naked eye, to covertly modulate binary information in morse-code like patterns

"In LCD screens each pixel presents a combination of RGB colors which produce the required compound color. In the proposed modulation, the RGB color component of each pixel is slightly changed."
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You can find detailed technical information on this research in the paper [PDF] titled, 'BRIGHTNESS: Leaking Sensitive Data from Air-Gapped Workstations via Screen Brightness,' published yesterday by Mordechai Guri, Dima Bykhovsky and Yuval Elovici.
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