Hackers can use mobile phones to "listen" to the noise made by a computer in order to crack secret encrypted communications that are stored on it, security experts have warned.
According to a new report in the Daily Telegraph, hackers were able to extract the decryption key, or password, needed to gain access to the encrypted information by listening to the noise made as the computer unlocks an encrypted communication.
"The noise which the researchers focused on was not the mechanical sound generated by fans or hard disks, but the vibration of tiny components in the voltage regulator as it tries to provide a constant voltage to the processor," the report pointed out.
Researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute of Science demonstrated the hack technique earlier this week by cracking GnuPG encryption. Full information about the vulnerability was passed to GnuPG a fix has been developed and released.
The Daily Telegraph went on to caution that, although some hacks were undertaken with highly sensitive microphones, the same results could also in some cases be achieved by placing a standard mobile phone close to the computer being attacked and listening with the built-in microphone.
"This means that an attack could potentially be carried out with nothing more than a smartphone, if the attack software could be written into an app," the report added.
"Currently the attack requires a laptop computer to analyses the audio and extract the decryption key."
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