{"id":5253,"date":"2024-09-11T08:00:44","date_gmt":"2024-09-11T13:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.darkreading.com\/ics-ot-security\/air-gapped-networks-vulnerable-to-acoustic-attack-via-lcd-screens"},"modified":"2024-09-11T08:00:44","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T13:00:44","slug":"air-gapped-networks-vulnerable-to-acoustic-attack-via-lcd-screens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ddi.mohflo.net\/index.php\/2024\/09\/11\/air-gapped-networks-vulnerable-to-acoustic-attack-via-lcd-screens\/","title":{"rendered":"Air-Gapped Networks Vulnerable to Acoustic Attack via LCD Screens"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A newly devised covert channel attack method could undermine diligently devised air gaps at highly sensitive organizations.<\/span><\/p>\n

In industrial control systems security, the term “air gap” is contested. It typically describes a total physical separation between networks \u2014 a literal gap through which no Wi-Fi signals, wires, etc., can pass. The most critical military, government, and industrial sites use air gaps to prevent Internet-based cyber threats from penetrating the kinds of networks that protect state secrets and human lives.<\/span><\/p>\n

But any medium capable of transmitting information can, in theory, be weaponized to transmit the bad kind. Mordechai Guri of Israel’s Ben-Gurion University has long researched ways of crossing air gaps with sound waves: via computer fans, hard disk drives, CD\/DVD drives, and more. His latest attack scenario, “Pixhell,” enables data theft using sounds produced by specially generated, rapidly shifting bitmap patterns on an LCD screen.<\/span><\/p>\n

How Pixhell Works<\/h2>\n

It’s midnight, and everyone working at the top secret intelligence facility has long gone home for the night, when all of a sudden a computer screen flashes with what appears to be random noise, as if it’s missing a signal. It isn’t missing a signal \u2014 the apparent noise <\/span>is <\/span><\/span>the signal.  <\/span><\/p>\n