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Because it lowers the threshold for a total informational compromise attack from "exfiltrate 34PB of data from secure govt infrastructure" down to "exfiltrate 100KB of key material". You can get that out over a few days just by pulsing any LED visible from outside an air-gapped facility.


Wait what?


There are all sorts of crazy ways of getting data out of even air-gapped machines, providing you are willing to accept extremely low data rates to overcome attenuation. Even with million-to-one signal-to-noise ratio, you can get significant amounts of key data out in a few weeks.

Jiggling disk heads, modulating fan rates, increasing and decreasing power draw... all are potential information leaks.


> There are all sorts of crazy ways of getting data out of even air-gapped machines.

Chelsea Manning apparently did it by walking in and out of the facility with a CD marked 'Lady Gaga'. Repeatedly

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/28/how-us-embassy...


On which TV show?




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