Researchers at Korea University’s School of Cybersecurity in Seoul have invented a way to steal information from a computer by using a microphone and passing the data through the speaker of the victim’s PC.
We often talk about the inventiveness of hackers and the new techniques they are constantly deploying to steal information or how hackers can listen to your conversations and deduce your personal information through the sensors integrated into smartphones under Android. Dubbed CASPER, the Korea University technique can steal data from a computer even if it is not connected to the Internet or any other network.
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Thanks to CASPER, hackers can record the data emitted through the victim’s computer speakers in the form of Morse (or binary) code in frequencies between 17 and 20 kHz.
These hackers hacked into a PC not connected to the Internet, with a Galaxy Z Flip 3
CASPER is all the more dangerous because it can steal data from a computer that is not connected to the network. The academics conducted their experiment by hacking into a computer running Ubuntu and recording its content on a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3. Malicious minds could therefore use this technique to attack critical infrastructures.
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However, for the attack to work, the target device must have been infected beforehand, which is not so easy when attacking really sensitive installations. Furthermore, the very slow throughput of CASPER, 20 kilobits per second, limits it to keylogging activity, at most. The Korean researchers also admit: “Our method is slower in data transfer than other secret channel technologies using optical or electromagnetic methods, because the speed of data transfer by sound is limited”.
Source: Bleeping Computer