The article claims that a household appliance can be hacked by reprogramming the circuits inside of it to release electromagnetic waves that could release system information, but exactly how credible is the threat, or is it as bad as it sounds?
2 Answers
Is it possible? Yes. Varying the electromagnetic noise of a device's circuits to transmit data has been used both in and out of laboratory settings. (For example, somebody figured out how to modulate the Raspberry Pi's GPIO pins to turn it into an FM radio transmitter, with the side effect of trashing a wide band of the radio spectrum.)
Is it practical? No. Even the Pi, with its relatively high-powered unshielded electronics, didn't have a range of more than a hundred meters or so.
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1You can easily boost the signal by attaching a XBee transmitter to the Pi and get amazingly 28 miles range. (The best case scenario) – Aug 05 '15 at 20:43
It is possible, practical and dangerous!
You can implement it by having a Raspberry Pi or Arduino to act as a modem, converting the digital bits into electromagnetic signals. Don't worry about the transmission range. Amplifying electromagnetic signals is not a big deal and doesn't request a lot of resources. Take a look at this example. Hackers were able to unlock a car by amplifying the signal sent by the car to the keyfob by 100 times (almost 100 meters - 300 feet) with a very cheap device (US$ 17).
If you have some extra cash you could attach a XBee transmitter and boost your range from 10 to 45 kms (6 to 28 miles)
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And if you hook your refrigerator up to Arecibo, you can make it heard out past Pluto. The CNN article is about exfiltrating data from unmodified appliances, not about extreme signal boosting. – Mark Aug 05 '15 at 20:58
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Exactly and they made it work. There is no discussion if it possible or not. The question has to do with the threat and how bad it is. – Aug 05 '15 at 21:05