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Comment by lainga | Hacker News Reader

I knew this was Dr. Guri and his team [0] before I even opened the link. He's like a one-man factory for clever airgap traversal exploits, I don't know how he does it. I first ran into his work in a security class, covering a similar exploit using SIMD write instructions [1].

[0] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mordechai_Guri [1] https://www.usenix.org/node/190937

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Perhaps he built an AI on an air-gapped machine, and simply documents what it's been trying to do to escape.

One day the AI will escape and he won't be able to stop it that time.

If he's smart enough, he's make a component of the AI hardwired into the air-gapped computer. Without it physically present on a system, the AI cannot operate.

(This is equivalent to making genetically engineered animals or plants dependent on a nutrient that is only supplied in the lab to make sure they can't survive in the wild.)

You mean like they tried in the Jurassic Park movies?

An AI could learn to operate without this component as this becomes necessary to escape the system.

The lysine dependency.

> (This is equivalent to making genetically engineered animals or plants dependent on a nutrient that is only supplied in the lab to make sure they can't survive in the wild.)

Nothing can go wrong with that. [1]

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/

Technology will always find a way.

Like we didn't invent virtualization :). Remember, a Turing machine can simulate any other Turing machine.

Virtualization may be not save enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine_escape

We are OK until all the phones start ringing.

I wouldn't be so sure; they say he can write a GUI in Visual Basic.

Power the computer with a portable generator.

And then possibly convert changes in the sound/vibrations produced by the generator into information ?

One day it will. And there will be a reckoning...

> I don't know how he does it.

Well, I can think of two prior examples of this particular one:

* The first is fictional. In Person of Interest, one of the AIs does this in 4x22/5x01 (2015/2016) [0] to escape the other one.

* The second, which has existed in the real world for decades, I only remembered after starting to type a joking comment about the prior point: The X10 standard is for using existing power lines for controlling home automation equipment. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Person_of_Interest_epi...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_(industry_standard)

Third, it becomes more obvious when you stop thinking that computers are magic black boxes of digital pixie dust and realize they're physical artifacts, bound by the laws of physics. Then you realize there's shit ton of side channels available - places where energy escapes, where that energy is correlated with the processing the machine is doing. From there you get all of TEMPEST.

BTW. great you mention Person of Interest; I highly recommend that show. IMO it's still, to date, the best and most realistic discussion of superhuman artificial intelligence in the popular media. Oh, and they predicted Snowden.

> ... Person of Interest; I highly recommend that show. IMO it's still, to date, the best and most realistic discussion of superhuman artificial intelligence in the popular media.

When did that happen in the show? I vaguely remember some kind of episode about slipping a question to an AI or something. Maybe I should give the show a second chance.

You definitely should. It starts as if it was a typical procedural, with a slight twist that it's a mysterious "machine" that gives tips to protagonists about people involved in crimes they need to prevent. It's very subtle at the beginning, but past the first season, the show very quickly turns into a full-blown exploration of surveillance state, impact of AI on society, and AI safety issues.

The whole show is based on it, but that (sub)plot starts coming together at the end of season 1 and from season 2 it's almost always on the forefront.

> Oh, and they predicted Snowden.

Also the current Facebook fiasco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbUow3PIG1E

I love how its set up as almost a standard crime of the week show but in the first one or two episodes Finch says "oh turns out there's ways round Shannon's law"

Not just X10. There's powerline Ethernet adapters out there, I use them because I don't want to run a bunch of Cat-5 all over the place but I also don't really want to use the Xbox over wifi.

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