Which
internet?
Hackers can now steal data from your PC using the power adapter. Dr. Mordechai Guri, a cybersecurity researcher at
Ben Gurion University in Israel, recently published an article that explains how hackers can use your power adapter to penetrate your PCs.
The attack works by the power supply relaying the data in ultrasound form and using it to extract data from air gap systems. For the uninitiated, air gap systems are those that are not connected, including Ethernet and Wi-Fi.
Surprisingly, data extraction with the power supply is quite simple. The malware called POWER-SUPPLaY changes the workload of the processing unit so that the generated ultrasound frequencies are changed. In this way, all read data can be recorded within a radius of 5 m. The changes in the emitted ultrasound frequency originate from the transformers and capacitors of the CPU. They are typically in the range from 20 kHz to 20 MHz.
No special hardware is required for such an attack. Fortunately, the data rate is a low 50 bits per second, which makes the success rate almost negligible. In addition, the malware must be manually installed on the victim’s computer. In most cases, hackers cannot directly access computers.
