Using side-channel technology, researchers at Tel Aviv University can extract decryption keys from RSA and ElGamal implementations without altering or having control of a computer.
Figure A: Tel Aviv University researchers built this self-contained PITA receiver.
Image courtesy of Daniel Genkin, Lev Pachmanov, Itamar Pipman, Eran Tromer, and Tel Aviv University
Not that long ago, grabbing information from air-gapped computers required sophisticated equipment. In my TechRepublic column
Air-gapped computers are no longer secure, researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology explain how simple it is to capture keystrokes from a computer just using spurious electromagnetic side-channel emissions emanating from the computer under attack.
Daniel Genkin, Lev Pachmanov, Itamar Pipman, and Eran Tromer, researchers at Tel Aviv University, agree the process is simple. However, the scientists have upped the ante, figuring out how to ex-filtrate complex encryption data using side-channel technology.
