With the help of research by Kaspersky Security Company along with some personal research, we will continue to highlight some of the technologies used in offline hacking.

Identification of electromagnetic waves

The United States and Russia have been researching electronic devices that emit magnetic waves for decades. Kaspersky believes that when a device is plugged into an outlet, it generates electromagnetic radiation that can be traced by certain technologies.

Now, people have gained the ability to use the ability to identify bumps on keyboards. Kaspersky says:

Keyboard kicks up to 2 meters away with a home-made tool that analyzes radio spectrum and costs $ 2 to build are highly accurate. It is interesting to note that this method works on low-cost, inexpensive wireless keyboards. Price is effective with encrypted signals and keyboards used in notebooks.

Energy consumption analysis

Using the topic of electricity, it is possible to identify the activities of a person’s device based on the amount of electricity the device uses. The technique, called Load Monitoring, monitors the voltage and current changes to detect the desired activity. This method is used in electricity companies to determine the factors of changes in electricity use in a given location.

But Japan’s Load Monitoring technique has shown that it has the ability to tell what device is used at the right time. Similarly, researchers use power consumption as a way to identify when malware enters a computer network.

What’s on your smartphone

Although smartphones are connectig to the Internet,

there are other parts of these phones that transmit information to the outside world.

For example, the accelerometer inside the phone can be used to detect what a person is typing on a computer. According to Kaspersky, if a smartphone is close to a computer, up to 5% correctly detects what the person is typing on the computer.

The accelerometer can not only detect what a person is typing

but it has also been proving to be useful for tracking people’s directions while using the subway. The way it works is that the duration of each trip between subway stations is taken as an indicator.

So if a spy wants to track someone in the subway,

just look at their accelerometer to find out which station the person is currently at.

Laser use

Of course, there are other ways that somehow resemble the future in our minds. Vibrations can be recorded by applying laser beams to a computer. This is much more accurate than using an accelerometer, but it does require that the laser beam to a spot that reflects light.

radio waves

This may be a little more complicated. Often times companies that have important information store this information on computers that are not connected to the Internet. In fact, these computers are completely isolated from any external network.

It may seem impossible at first glance to hack such devices, but there seems to be a way. If a spyware needs this information, it is enough to embed a small device into the target computer that has malware. The malicious software can send information through the radio waves generated by the PC’s graphics card.

And the story is even more bizarre. Smartphones can be used to deliver this information. So if someone is nearby with a smartphone, they unwittingly receive this information sent by radio waves and then pass it on to the hacker.

Two things are need for this hack method. First of all, transferring malware to the target computer and then abusing a smartphone to receive and send information, although these two may not be possible for various security reasons. It seems that some of the same methods led to the development of Stuxnet malware.

The heat of computers

This is another sophisticate tactic for accessing information on offline computers that uses the motherboard’s heat to transmit data wirelessly.

According to Kaspersky, offline computers are usually next to online computers for ease of use.Spyware is possible if both computers are infected with certain malware.

The way it works is that the malware on the offline computer reads the classified information

and changes the system temperature periodically and generates modular thermal signals. The second computer receives and decodes these signals and sends classified information over the Internet.

It therefore sends heat changes to the signal. This kind of communication is very slow and, according to Kaspersky, the maximum data rate is 2 bits per hour.

Passing information through steel walls

Even if a device is keeping in a fully enclose room, even walls can sometimes be penetrating. For example, there are espionage devices capable of passing information through steel walls.

Kaspersky says:

One device is secretly embed in the target room, while another is place outside the room. The data transfer rate in this method reaches 2 MB / s. In addition, for one of these embedded devices, there is no need for an energy source as the energy is transmitted like data.