@inproceedings{de54200db41e40e0b3b3ca57ebac8625,
title = "HOTSPOT: Crossing the air-gap between isolated pcs and nearby smartphones using temperature",
abstract = "Air-gapped computers are hermetically isolated from the Internet to eliminate any means of information leakage. In this paper we present HOTSPOT - a new type of airgap crossing technique. Signals can be sent secretly from air-gapped computers to nearby smartphones and then on to the Internet - in the form of thermal pings. The thermal signals are generated by the CPUs and GPUs and intercepted by a nearby smartphone. We examine this covert channel and discuss other work in the field of air-gap covert communication channels. We present technical background and describe thermal sensing in modern smartphones. We implement a transmitter on the computer side and a receiver Android App on the smartphone side, and discuss the implementation details. We evaluate the covert channel and tested it in a typical work place. Our results show that it possible to send covert signals from air-gapped PCs to the attacker on the Internet through the thermal pings. We also propose countermeasures for this type of covert channel which has thus far been overlooked.",
keywords = "Air-gap, Covert-channels, Exfiltration, Smartphones, Temperature, Thermal",
author = "Mordechai Guri",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019 IEEE.; 2019 European Intelligence and Security Informatics Conference, EISIC 2019 ; Conference date: 26-11-2019 Through 27-11-2019",
year = "2019",
month = nov,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1109/EISIC49498.2019.9108874",
language = "English",
series = "Proceedings of the 2019 European Intelligence and Security Informatics Conference, EISIC 2019",
publisher = "Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers",
pages = "94--100",
editor = "Joel Brynielsson",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2019 European Intelligence and Security Informatics Conference, EISIC 2019",
address = "United States",
}