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Isolated computers hacked by USB drive

In recent years, the number of attacks against isolated from the network systems has increased significantly. Isolated systems are not compromised under the conventional way.

A new software exploit has been revealed named USBee which extracts data from air-gripped (cut off from network) computers through USB drives and transmits it at 80 bytes/second which can be read later with the help of GNU-radio-powered receiver and demodulator. Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of Israel had developed the software-exploit which can steal 4096-bit encryption key in less than 10 seconds.

The chances of a successful attack are quite limited. In the event of a successful compromise an attacker must have physical access to the computer. It just needs hardware worth $ 30 to operate.

One such exfiltrator, known as CottonMouth, was developed by NSA. To execute the hack, the tool had to be somehow smuggled into the facility housing the computer and one doesn’t need to make any modifications to the USB hardware.

However, it is important that the chosen computer is infected with malware which is a difficult part as it is the isolated one so to do that the human interference is important.

The USBee works with USB 2.0 device.

This research team has developed similar airgap-jumping attack mechanisms named AirHopper, BitWhisper, GSMem, and Fansmitter.
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