Can you feel the burn? Because, it’s now possible to hack computers using heat!

Heat has always been a problem for computers, whether the cooling system isn't working properly and the fans have stopped functioning or the actual physical location of your computer is too hot, heat can be seriously damaging.

But now there’s more to worry about than a smoking CPU, researchers have actually managed to figure out how to hack a computer using heat!

The researchers, who are from the Ben-Gurion University of Negev, have created a new piece of malware called BitWhisper. This hostile and intrusive software is not something that a cybercriminal would use to hack your home computer, no, BitWhisper is the kind of insane hacking tool that you would see in a sci-fi movie – only it’s completely real!

So, how does it work? Well, infected computers can transmit data using the heat that they produce. For example: commands can be passed from one system to another system by simply passing on its temperature. The machine that is the target will be able to pick up on the fluctuations using the thermal sensors and execute an action that was planned a head of time. Small bits of data, like passwords, can also be transmitted this way.

It’s true that it’s not the most well-organized and efficient way to get data off a machine, but it’s not meant to be. BitWhisper targets mostly air-gapped systems, so, computers that are completely separated from wireless and wired networks in order to keep them as secure as possible. These are sensitive government and military systems and nuclear reactor control computers, that sort of thing! But, even air-gapped computers can be infected and they often are, usually by really sophisticated, state-of-the-art malware.

BitWhisper isn't malware that’s built for a long period of time. It’s okay that it captures information slowly, because the other option is never capturing any data at all.

How could BitWhisper get on a machine in the first place? Well, it could probably be loaded on to the hard drive beforehand, or delivered on an infected USB flash drive.  Having a malware around like BitWhisper is kind of a scary thought, but ultimately the researchers have assured that it’s not very worrisome.

To see how it works, watch the video here...

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Written By; Christine Romans