A hard drive's LED light can be used to covertly leak data
(PCWorld)

The seemingly harmless blinking lights on servers and desktop PCs may give away secrets if a hacker can hijack them with malware. Researchers in Israel have come up with an innovative hack that turns a computer`s LED light into a signaling system that shows passwords and other sensitive data. The researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev demonstrated the hack in a YouTube video posted Wednesday. It shows a hacked computer broadcasting the data through a computer´s LED light, with a drone flying nearby reading the pattern. The researchers designed the scheme to underscore vulnerabilities of air-gapped systems, or computers that have been intentionally disconnected from the internet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here