It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
What is it doing?
originally posted by: DAVID64
a reply to: flatbush71
Well...crap. Now I'm a bit worried. Not long ago [ 2 - 3 weeks? ] my computer was acting very strange. I have an app that shows how much RAM is being used, along with if the network is active and with the browser closed, it's usually only around 19%. Suddenly, I'm up to around 50% and that's just sitting here doing nothing. No browser open, not playing games, nothing. It also showed that the network was not being used. Then one day, as suddenly as it started, it stopped. I ran Malwarebytes and it didn't find anything, nor did Spybot. I know just enough about this stuff...to know I don't know a whole lot about this stuff.
originally posted by: flatbush71
Guys there is something really strange about this, its just very unusual.
Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems can be used as a means to bridge air-gapped networks with the outside world, allowing remote attackers to send commands to malware placed inside a target’s isolated network. This type of attack scenario — codenamed HVACKer by its creators — relies on custom-built malware that is capable of interacting with a computer’s thermal sensors to read temperature variations and convert these fluctuations into zeros and ones — binary code.
The malware, already installed on a computer on an isolated network with no Internet access, reads the temperature variations created by the HVAC system and converts the received thermal signals into malicious operations.
Researchers from the Cyber Security Research Center at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel were the ones who came up with this attack scenario, and they created proof-of-concept malware that can be used to execute HVACKer attacks.
They also created a custom line-encoding protocol that allows a remote attacker to send commands using temperature fluctuations. This custom line-encoding protocol — the technique of breaking down binary data to voltage, thermal, or optical signals — was needed because classic line-encoding methods were too slow and inaccurate.