Laptops And Flat Panels Now Vulnerable to Van Eck Methods

An anonymous reader writes "Using radio to eavesdrop on CRTs has been around since the 80s, but Cambridge University researchers have now shown that laptops and flat-panel displays are vulnerable too. Using basic radio equipment and an FPGA board totaling less than $2,000 it was possible for researchers to read text from a laptop three offices away. 'Kuhn also mentioned that one laptop was vulnerable because it had metal hinges that carried the signal of the display cable. I asked if you could alter a device to make it easier to spy on. "There are a lot of innocuous modifications you can make to maximize the chance of getting a good signal," he told me. For example, adding small pieces of wire or cable to a display could make a big difference.'"

Comments

Telling question

[Tumbleweed]

"I asked if you could alter a device to make it easier to spy on."

Okay, see, that's the type of questions the NSA likes to see its potential employees ask. Any other type of person would ask if you could alter a device to make it *harder* to spy on.

Re:Telling question

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless, of course, you're looking to protect yourself from such modifications.

Re:Telling question

[goombah99]

Well the voting machine companies would like to know how to do that too.

Re:Telling question

[Detritus]

The NSA cares about both questions. They have a large group of people dedicated to keeping government communications secure, and another large group of people dedicated to hacking everyone else's communications systems.

ch0wned!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this means they've always been vulnerable, but no one knew. It's not like someone turned on the Vulnerable switch.

Re:ch0wned!

[Lehk228]

actually the NSA is pretty good about disclosing vulnerabilities such as that. the threat of foreign corporate and military espionage is much greater than the usefullness of such technology for domestic abuses.

HDMI?

[jandrese]

I wonder if they're just reading the signals that are being sent over the wire? With analog signals this is pretty easy to to, but with DVI it's a lot harder, and way harder still if the signal is encrypted. With the future of display technologies appearing to be heading as close as possible to encryption to the eyeballs, it makes me wonder how long this will remain viable.

Re:HDMI?

[Anonymous Coward]

The display itself isn't encrypted until the DRM Helmet becomes mandatory. Tempest equipment doesn't care what the signal to the screen is, it reads the signal FROM the screen.

It wouldn't help pirates much though -- tempest output is seriously low-fi fuzzy.

Security hole in the making

[Nonillion]

I remember seeing a demo of this back in the 80's. I always had a suspicion this was possible, however some people still balk at this as 'science fiction'. I can assure you it's not. It's this kind of thing that should be waking up manufactures to the perils of shitty RFI design. Spewing broad band spectrum pollution not only causes radio interference, but also opens you to security problems.

Not to go slightly off topic here, but BPL (broadband over power wires) providers ought to see this as a wakeup call. Coupling broad band ODMF signals on widely spaced wires hanging 40+ feet in the air, radiating like antennas is a HUGE security issue. Not only can BPL be jammed with something as simple as a CB or Amateur radio transceiver, but a creative individual could use similar methods to monitor BPL signals.