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Monitoring Your Monitor

Posted by michael on from the blackout-curtains dept.

bje2 writes "Rememeber this story from a couple months ago about reconstructing data from the blinking LEDs of modems...well, CNet is running a story about reconstructing the display of a computer by using special hardware and the reflected glow of the monitor." Kuhn's paper (400k PDF) is available.

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  1. TV Ratings by TomRC · · Score: 4, Interesting


    Imagine a van driving slowly down the streets of a neighborhood every 10 minutes, monitoring the blue TV glow coming out of windows.

    Not reconstructing the actual image - just watching the gross flicker patterns, and matching them against all TV stations in real time.

    If it finds someone that's not on a known TV station, it pauses for a minute and logs a longer sequence of flickers to match against the flicker patterns of a large library of videos.

    Talk about precise marketing info!

    Talk about potential blackmail material - ("Did you enjoy your viewing of 'Under-age Girls' last night Mr. Politician? Doing a bit of research, were you?" What about the previous 15 nights?")

    Maybe we need to extend "peeping tom" laws to cover any deliberate use of EM radiation coming out of our homes...