Hackers Steal PC Data by Reading Computer’s Blinking LEDs

Hackers have come up with a new way to steal the data off your computer. The method includes stealing your information by analyzing the blinking LED lights on your computer. To start with the hacker has to trick you into installing malware on your machine or install it themselves via a USB drive or SD card.

Once that malware is installed the hackers have a flying drone that will take station outside the window of the room where the PC resides. The LED lights that are on the front of most computers will then blink and the drone is able to read the blinking lights and translate the flashes into data.

The hack was designed by a group of researchers and they also came up with a protection against the hack at the same time. That protection isn’t particularly useful for many folks though as it involves removing PCs that contain sensitive data from the internet.

An alternative strategy to protect PC data from this hack might simply be to ensure that the PC isn’t facing a window or shut the blinds. The lights could seemingly flash all they want if the drone that has to see the flashes can’t see the computer. A team from Ben-Gurion University (BGU) in Beersheba, Israel came up with the hack.

“If an attacker has a foothold in your air-gapped system, the malware still can send the data out to the attacker,” Dr. Mordechai Guri, head of research and development at BGUs Cyber Security Research Center, told Wired.

“We found that the small hard drive indicator LED can be controlled at up to 6,000 blinks per second.”

“We can transmit data in a very fast way at a very long distance.”

The developers of the hack say that it can be used to move data as fast a 4,000 bits per second, working out to about a megabyte every half hour.