Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello, I have a question concerning the Hacking the Air Gap: Stealing Data from a Computer that isn't Connected to the Internet project. I would like to know exactly why you would want to export data off a computer that is air gapped I understand why you would want to get the malware on in the first place. But why would you want to get the data off the air gapped computer.
Thanks!

Hello, and welcome to Science Buddies!

That is an excellent question. People, companies, and the government all work on computers not connected to the internet for a variety of reasons. Two I can think of are people working in areas without good internet connection and those that want to protect their data from the very topic of this project. While it's not impossible to hack data from an air gapped computer, it can make it more difficult, so an air gapped computer is an appealing idea to those that want to protect their information. Imagine a scientist designing a patent, an author working on a new novel, a company protecting proprietary information, or a government office needing to keep secrets safe. That is information you don't want stolen.

Now, to your question about why you would want to move data off of those computers. Perhaps the scientist, after completing his / her patent design, needs to move the information over to a connected computer in order to submit the patent. The author completing his / her first draft of a novel needing to send it to their editor. Exporting pictures to a thumb drive to send to a printing service. Theses are just a few of, I'm sure, many many more examples.

I hope this helps. Please write back if you have more questions, and good luck!

Thank you for the response I understand now. I have one more question if the malware gets on the computer via a usb stick and the malware is working and it gets the computer to start sending information using a binary signal such as turning the brightness up and down would somebody have to be physically present to record the data?
Thanks!!

Hi rhinotree4 - sorry you never got a reply to your follow up question. If you haven't already I would recommend reading some of the resources in the bibliography to this project. They go into detail about how hackers could actually get data off the computer. One cool example is having a drone look in through a window using a camera to see the blinking lights.