Image by youtube/BGUCSU

By Dan Friedman February 26, 2017

If your computer is “air-gapped” (i.e. not plugged into any network) it’s safe, right?

Well, as the Stuxnet virus that infected Iranian computers and destroyed their nuclear centrifuges showed — not so much. The real trick is to infect the air-gapped computer, and there are plenty of human weak links.

However, if the aim is to steal information, rather than just destroy hardware, software or data, things are trickier.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis of the crisis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

That’s where Mordechai Guri and his team at the Cyber Security Research Center come in. From the guys who brought you US Bee where malware causes a regular USB thumb drive to emit particular electromagnetic waves that another computer with a simple antennae can pick up and decode, comes LED-It-Go.

The system is outlined and contextualized in an article by Wired, but essentially, the malware convinces the blinking LEDs common to Windows system computers to blink super-fast and to reveal information to a drone with a video camera that is as far away as video contact can be effectively established.

So the wrong card in your computer and any passing drone can read your worst secrets — even if you aren’t linked to the internet.

Fortunately the security patch for this is as simple as a pair of scissors and some duct tape to tape over the LEDs. But next time might be more difficult.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount