Security News > 2022 > July > Air-gapped systems leak data via SATA cable WiFi antennas
A security researcher has found a new way to steal data from air-gapped systems by using serial ATA cables present inside most computers as a wireless antenna that sends out data via radio signals.
The researcher found that SATA cables in computers can deliver over a radio channel between 5.9995 and 5.9996 GHz electromagnetic signals that correspond to specific characters.
Through experimentation with various systems and settings, the researcher has determined that the maximum distance from the air-gapped computer to the receiver cannot be greater than 120 cm, or the bit error rate increases too much to ensure the integrity of the message.
We transmitted the data with a bit rate of 1 bit/sec, which is shown to be the minimal time to generate a signal which is strong enough for modulation.
The researcher has found that when virtual machines are abused to perform the data-translating read/write operations, the signal quality on the SATA cable is reduced significantly.
Over the years, Guri and his team demonstrated that isolated networks can still allow leaking of sensitive information via signals generated by components present in the systems like monitors, speakers, cables, CPU, HDDs, cameras, keyboards.