News PowerHammer steals data from air-gapped system

I thought this sounded familiar. Side-channel leakages are always fun, from 'traditional' Van-Eck Phreaking to more esoteric stuff (FM leakage via GPU modulation of an output, or modulating fan speed to pick up the audible tone). I wonder how many of these actually have the chance to be used 'live', and how many just mean an extra step added to the long list of ECHELON hardening requirements in case someone else thought of it first.

 

You'd think most machines that would warrant these sorts of attacks would have practical physical protection that would negate them. In this case any sort of grid independent regulated power supply that an attacker would not have physical access to.

 

Not many, because a lot of them require close physical proximity to the victim to retrieve the data.