14 DAY TRIAL // When it comes to acting like a super-secret agent and wanting to siphon secret data from mobile devices or any device for that matter, nothing will stand in your way, except telephones from ten or fifteen years ago.
Old tech is the greatest impediment for today's advanced siphoning software and tools. With no 3G or even 2G and connected to no cell network whatsoever, they serve their masters perfectly as an impenetrable brick. Until now.
Researchers at Ben-Gurion University in Israel figured out how to discreetly siphon data from an isolated computer with absolutely wireless radios, no external connectivity and obviously no connection whatsoever to any computer. Apparently, all you needed is a little malware and a dumbphone from the early noughties.
So if you manage to deploy a tiny piece of malware to a target computer, the machine's memory could be used to transmit low-power emissions. To better understand this, computers naturally emit electromagnetic radiation during their normal operation, and cell phones by their nature are “agile receivers” of such signals. The RAM memory's bus will be turned into a radio antenna emitting low-frequency signals.
Nothing is safe
Although no native data can be carried by the source's weak signal, a simple Morse code of 1s and 0s can be transmitted and be interpreted by a nearby phone with a similar malware.
It isn't easy to manage such a spy feat since you need to introduce the malware in said computer in a way or another, maybe in a physical form, but once pulled off, it's discreet enough to subvert common security protocols for air-gapped networks where only dumbphones are allowed, and are limited only to making and receiving calls and text messages.
This experiment has been unveiled by the Ben Gurion University to serve as a warning to security companies and assemblies holding sensitive data, that even the most primitive forms of technologies can be used to siphon data by an external intruder.
