Computer systems that are physically isolated from the outside world can also be exposed to attack. This is demonstrated by IT security experts at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in the LaserShark project: With a directed laser, data can be transmitted to light-emitting diodes already installed in devices. In this way, attackers can secretly communicate with physically isolated systems over several meters. LaserShark shows that security-critical IT systems not only have to be well protected in terms of information and communication technology, but also optically.&nbsp;Hackers attack computers with lasers - this could be a scene in a James Bond film, but it is also possible in reality. At the beginning of December 2021, scientists from KIT, TU Braunschweig and TU Berlin presented their research project LaserShark, which investigates hidden communication via optical channels, at the 37th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC). Computers or networks in security-critical areas, such as those found in energy suppliers, in medical technology or in traffic control systems, are often physically isolated to prevent external access. With this so-called air gapping, the systems have neither wired nor wireless connections to the outside world. Previous approaches to this protection via electromagnetic, Breaking acoustic or optical channels only works over short spatial distances or at low data transmission rates; often they only allow data to be extracted.&nbsp;<h2>Hidden optical channel uses LEDs in standard office equipment&nbsp;</h2>The method demonstrated by the research group Intelligent System Security at the KASTEL - Institute for Information Security and Reliability of the KIT together with researchers from the TU Braunschweig and the TU Berlin, on the other hand, can initiate dangerous attacks: With a directed laser beam, outsiders can smuggle data into and out of systems protected by air gapping channel them out without the need for additional hardware on site. "This hidden optical communication uses light-emitting diodes as they are already built into devices, for example to display status messages on printers or telephones," explains junior professor Christian Wressnegger, head of the Intelligent System Security research group at KASTEL. "These LEDs are actually not intended for receiving light,&nbsp;<div class="fr-img-space-wrap"><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1640338722943-2021_117_IT-Sicherheit_Computerangriffe+mit+Laserlicht_2_72dpi.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Schematic representation of the hidden optical communication channel through which a physically isolated system can be attacked. (Image: KASTEL / KIT)&nbsp;</div><h2 id="isPasted">Data transfer works in both directions </h2>By directing laser light onto built-in LEDs and recording their reaction, they have for the first time set up a hidden optical communication channel that extends over distances of up to 25 meters, works bidirectionally - in both directions - and has high data transmission rates of 18.2 kilobits each Second inwards and 100 kilobits per second outwards.&nbsp;This possibility of attack affects commercially available office equipment such as those used in companies, universities and authorities.&nbsp;"Our LaserShark project shows how important it is to protect security-critical IT systems not only in terms of information and communication technology, but also optically," says Wressnegger.&nbsp;In order to advance research on the topic and to further develop protection against hidden optical communication, the researchers provide the program code used in their experiments, the raw data from their measurements and the scripts on the LaserShark project page:&nbsp;<a href="https://intellisec.de/research/lasershark" target="_blank">https://intellisec.de/research/lasershark</a> .<h2>Original publication</h2>Niclas Kühnapfel, Stefan Preußler, Maximilian Noppel, Thomas Schneider, Konrad Rieck, and Christian Wressnegger: LaserShark: Establishing Fast, Bidirectional Communication into Air-Gapped Systems. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC). 2021. DOI: 10.1145 / 3485832.348591&nbsp;

Data can also be transmitted by laser, so security-critical systems must be well protected optically. (Photo: Andrea Fabry, KIT)

LaserShark: KIT researchers investigate hidden communication via optical channels - data can be transmitted to light-emitting diodes already built into devices

IT security: computer attacks with laser light

Finding the biggest collisions in the universe takes time, patience, and super steady lasers.In May, NASA specialists working with industry partners delivered the first prototype laser for the European Space Agency-led Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA, mission. This unique laser instrument is designed to detect the telltale ripples in gravitational fields caused by the mergers of neutron stars, black holes, and supermassive black holes in space.Anthony Yu at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, leads the laser transmitter development for LISA.“We’re developing a highly stable and robust laser for the LISA observatory,” Yu said. “We've leveraged lessons learned from previous missions and the latest technologies in photonics packaging and reliability engineering. Now, to meet the challenging LISA requirements, NASA has developed a system that produces a laser transmitter by using a low-power laser enhanced by a fiber-optic amplifier."The team is building upon the laser technology used in NASA’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/index.html" target="_blank">Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE</a>, mission. “We developed a more compact version as a master oscillator,” Yu said. “It has much smaller size, weight, and power consumption to allow for a fully redundant master oscillator for long-duration lifetime requirements.”The LISA laser prototype is a 2-watt laser operating in the near-infrared part of the spectrum. “Our laser is about 400 times more powerful than the typical laser pointer that puts out about 5 milliwatts or less,” Yu said. “The laser module size, not including the electronics, is about half the volume of a typical shoe box.”The Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM), headquartered in Neuchâtel, Switzerland,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.csem.ch/page.aspx?pid=164922" target="_blank">confirmed receipt of the lasers</a> and will begin testing them for stability.LISA will consist of three spacecraft following Earth in its orbit around the Sun and flying in a precision formation, with 1.5 million miles (2.5 million kilometers) separating each one. Each spacecraft will continuously point two lasers at its counterparts. The laser receiver must be sensitive to a few hundreds of picowatts of signal strength, as the laser beam will spread to about 12 miles (20 kilometers) by the time it reaches its target spacecraft. A time-code signal embedded in the beams allows LISA to measure the slightest interference in these transmissions.Ripples in the fabric of space-time as small as a picometer – 50 times smaller than a hydrogen atom – will produce a detectable change in the distances between the spacecraft. Measuring these changes will give scientists the general scale of what collided to produce these ripples and an idea of where in the sky to aim other observatories looking for secondary effects.These gravitational wave fluctuations are so small they would be obscured by external forces such as dust impacts and the radiation pressure of sunlight on the spacecraft. To mitigate this, the drag-free control concept – demonstrated on the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/lisa-pathfinder-mission-paves-way-for-space-based-detection-of-gravitational-waves" target="_blank">LISA Pathfinder mission in 2015</a> – uses free-floating test masses sheltered inside each spacecraft as reference points for the measurement.LISA expands on work by the National Science Foundation’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20160211" target="_blank">captured its first recording of gravitational waves in 2015</a>. Since then, the pair of ground-based observatories in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana, have captured four dozen mergers.&nbsp;Thomas Hams, program scientist for LISA at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said the precision laser measurements will allow us to zoom in on the gravitational wave signatures of these mergers and enable other observatories to focus on the right part of the sky to capture these events in the electromagnetic spectrum.NASA’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/content/fermi-gamma-ray-space-telescope" target="_blank">Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope</a> picked up the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-missions-catch-first-light-from-a-gravitational-wave-event" target="_blank">first such multimessenger observation</a> just seconds after LIGO detected a merger of two neutron stars through gravitational waves.“With LISA, the hope is you will be able to see these things develop before the merger actually happens,” Hams said. “There will be an indicator that something is coming.”Industry PartnershipTo achieve the required stability, the team brought Fibertek Inc. in Herndon, Virginia, and Avo Photonics Inc. in Horsham, Pennsylvania, to develop the laser, oscillator, and power amplifier, and an independent optical engineer in San Jose, California.Avo Photonics built the laser for the observatory.“Here you have the challenges of spaceborne ruggedness needs, on top of submicron-level optical alignment tolerance requirements. These really push your optical, thermal, and mechanical design chops,” Avo Photonics President Joseph L. Dallas said. “In addition, the narrow linewidth, low noise, and overall stability needed for this mission is unprecedented.”Photonics pioneer Tom Kane invented the monolithic laser oscillator technology that Goddard used to stabilize the frequency of the laser light. “Your average laser can be very messy,” Kane said. “They can wander all around their target frequency. You need a ‘quiet’ laser that’s exactly one wavelength and a perfect beam out to 15 decimal places of accuracy.”His oscillator technology uses feedback loops to keep the laser burning at such precision. “The wavelength ends up becoming the ruler for these incredible distances,” Kane said.The high-power, low-noise amplifier came from Fibertek.Fibertek also contributed to NASA’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/icesat-2" target="_blank">Ice Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) 2</a> and the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/calipso/main/index.html" target="_blank">Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO),</a> which has been operating a laser pointed at Earth for 15 years.Including time for testing on the ground and potential mission extensions, LISA’s lasers must operate without skipping a hertz for up to 16 years, Goddard’s Yu said.“Once launched, they will need to be in 24/7 operation for five years for the initial mission, with a possible six to seven years of extended mission after that,” Yu explained. “We need them to be stable and quiet.”

The first prototype of a laser sits on a testbed at the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM), headquartered in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. CSEM will test and characterize the laser, which will be used to conduct gravitational wave experiments in space for the LISA mission. Credits: European Space Agency/CSEM

Finding the biggest collisions in the universe takes time, patience, and super steady lasers.

NASA Provides Laser for LISA Mission

In this episode, we talk about how Australian National University researchers broke the world record for solar cell efficiency and a new AI-powered device coming out of MIT that can help you determine if the material you want to use for laser cutting is safe + what settings to use. As always, you can find these and other interesting &amp; impactful engineering articles on Wevolver.com.<iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/c804ffff-8729-468e-ba2e-c8ce075f61d4?dark=false" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe>&nbsp;<h3 id="isPasted">EPISODE NOTES</h3>(1:09) - Scientists Set New Record With Bifacial Solar Cells:&nbsp;Australian National University just broke a world record for solar efficiency by harvesting solar energy reflected from the ground behind a solar panel using their novel double sided approach.(7:27) - Smart Laser Cutter System Detects Different Materials:&nbsp;Have you ever wanted to use a laser cutter without needing to research the right settings for the material you want to cut? Well, MIT has developed an AI powered optical sensor that can determine whether your material is safe and if so, it’ll tell you the exact parameters to use!--About the podcast:Every day, some of the most innovative universities, companies, and individual technology developers share their knowledge on Wevolver. To ensure we can also provide this knowledge for the growing group of podcast listeners, we started a collaboration with two young engineers, Daniel Scott Mitchell &amp; Farbod Moghaddam who discuss the most interesting content in this podcast series.&nbsp;To learn more about this show, please visit the <a href="https://www.wevolver.com/profile/the.next.byte" target="_blank">shows page</a>. By following the page, you will get automatic updates by email when a new show is published.Be sure to give us a follow and review on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/the-next-byte/id1548255861?l=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Apple</a> podcasts, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6lPPsRtegnivsRUEsQ09R7?si=IPMiah7xT_apJtPjqvXMlA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Spotify</a>, and most of your favorite podcast platforms!Take a few seconds to leave us a review. It really helps!&nbsp;<a href="https://apple.co/2RIsbZ2" target="_blank">https://apple.co/2RIsbZ2</a>if you do it and send us proof, we’ll give you a shoutout on the show.

Image: Eric Byler/The Autralian National University

In this episode, we talk about how Australian National University researchers broke the world record for solar cell efficiency and a new AI-powered device coming out of MIT that can help you determine if the material you want to use for laser cutting is safe + what settings to use.

Podcast: The Solar Panel That Broke The World Record

Understanding how light waves oscillate in time as they interact with materials is essential to understanding light-driven energy transfer in materials, such as solar cells or plants. Due to the fantastically high speeds at which light waves oscillate, however, scientists have yet to develop a compact device with enough time resolution to directly capture them.Now, a team led by MIT researchers has demonstrated chip-scale devices that can directly trace the weak electric field of light waves as they change in time. Their device, which incorporates a microchip that uses short laser pulses and nanoscale antennas, is easy to use, requiring no special environment for operation, minimal laser parameters, and conventional laboratory electronics.The team’s work,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-021-00792-0" target="_blank">published earlier this month</a> in&nbsp;Nature Photonics, may enable the development of new tools for optical measurements with applications in areas such as biology, medicine, food safety, gas sensing, and drug discovery.“The potential applications of this technology are many,” says co-author Phillip Donnie Keathley, group leader and Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) research scientist. “For instance, using these optical sampling devices, researchers will be able to better understand optical absorption pathways in plants and photovoltaics, or to better identify molecular signatures in complex biological systems.”Keathley’s co-authors are lead author Mina Bionta, a senior postdoc at RLE; Felix Ritzkowsky, a graduate student at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) and the University of Hamburg who was an MIT visiting student; and Marco Turchetti, a graduate student in RLE. The team was led by Keathley working with professors Karl Berggren in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS); Franz Kärtner of DESY and University of Hamburg in Germany; and William Putnam of the University of California at Davis. Other co-authors are Yujia Yang, a former MIT postdoc now at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EFPL), and Dario Cattozzo Mor, a former visiting student.<h2>The ultrafast meets the ultrasmall — time stands still at the head of a pin</h2>Researchers have long sought methods for measuring systems as they change in time. Tracking gigahertz waves, like those used for your phone or Wi-Fi router, requires a time resolution of less than 1 nanosecond (one-billionth of a second). To track visible light waves requires an even faster time resolution — less than 1 femtosecond (one-millionth of one-billionth of a second).The MIT and DESY research teams designed a microchip that uses short laser pulses to create extremely fast electronic flashes at the tips of nanoscale antennas. The nanoscale antennas are designed to enhance the field of the short laser pulse to the point that they are strong enough to rip electrons out of the antenna, creating an electronic flash that is quickly deposited into a collecting electrode. These electronic flashes are extremely brief, lasting only a few hundred attoseconds (a few one-hundred-billionths of one-billionth of 1 second).Using these fast flashes, the researchers were able to take snapshots of much weaker light waves oscillating as they passed by the chip.“This work shows, once more, how the merger of nanofabrication and ultrafast physics can lead to exciting insights and new ultrafast measurements tools,” says Professor Peter Hommelhoff, chair for laser physics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, who was not connected with this work. “All this is based on the deep understanding of the underlying physics. Based on this research, we can now measure ultrafast field waveforms of very weak laser pulses.”The ability to directly measure light waves in time will benefit both science and industry, say the researchers. As light interacts with materials, its waves are altered in time, leaving signatures of the molecules inside. This optical field sampling technique promises to capture these signatures with greater fidelity and sensitivity than prior methods while using compact and integratable technology needed for real-world applications.

As a laser illuminates these nanometer-scale devices (blue wave), attosecond electron flashes are generated (red pulse) at the ends of nanotips and used to trace out weak light fields (red wave). Credits:Image: Marco Turchetti

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