http://cyber.bgu.ac.il/blog/bitwhisper-heat-air-gap

I am always looking for clever ways to hack stuff.  Most of what I write falls into the science fiction genre with an eye towards future tech, but one of the things I find, over and over again in my day job as a game developer is that you can’t ever ignore your legacy.  Every system, no matter how sophisticated, went through a development process.  It started out based on the preconceptions and experiences of the original designers and unless that system was burned to the ground and started from scratch at some point, those legacies are going to be there, informing everything from the color choices down to the arrangement of microprocessors on a board.  As the staff at a company turns over and the original engineers move onto new things, the reasons for those legacies are often forgotten.  People know the system handles things one way, but over time, they *why* is left behind.

Ken Liu brought the above article to my attention (via a FB post) and I think this is a great example of a legacy hack that goes deeper than a system’s initial design.  You’re hacking one of the fundamental characteristics of a computing system itself, the heat that plagues everyone who has ever held a laptop on their lap for too long, or who has tried to play Minecraft in a sweltering 100 degree apartment.  What was a vexing problem before now has become a potential security risk.