Scary, but I have to admit that this gives me really cool ideas as a science fiction writer. I'm jotting down this down so that I may revisit it later.

24601

I'd like a source for that, as I'm somewhat curious as to how they're using sound to actually do that.

Let me grab the link for you.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/12/scientist-developed-malware-covertly-jumps-air-gaps-using-inaudible-sound/

Heard about it. General consensus from the experts is:

"Ha! No!"

I heard about that. Honestly I can't really imagine how that's supposed to work but if it does, that's several levels of scary AND awesome.

-Gata

At the bit rate the article says, it'd take nearly 14 hours to transmit one megabyte of information.

It's... not very feasible, not with the complexity viruses need to have nowadays.

Yeah. That does appear to be an issue....

Plus, I don't think computers are always waiting for audio input. They'd need a microphone. The whole thing just falls apart upon examination.

Not really. My phone can receive voice commands whenever it's on, or at least when the screen is on. I'm not sure about my laptop though. And I don't know how to test for that, because, well, testing for it means I'm asking for it to receive input, defeating the purpose.

Now it's obvious that the test was given favorable conditions. But that doesn't mean it can't work. But if the range is within 65 feet, than you're already not to far away. it wouldn't be unreasonable to load a bug onto the computer to have the mic always on, if we assume that it isn't already.

A quick google search reveals that the mic could always be on, but that's only what I can gather with the limited data I can find.