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Georgia Institute of Technology Researchers Bridge the Airgap

Posted by timothy on from the always-type-in-gibberish dept.

An anonymous reader writes Hacked has a piece about Georgia Institute of Technology researchers keylogging from a distance using the electromagnetic radiation of CPUs. They can reportedly do this from up to 6 meters away. In this video, using two Ubuntu laptops, they demonstrate that keystrokes are easily interpreted with the software they have developed. In their white paper they talk about the need for more research in this area so that hardware and software manufacturers will be able to develop more secure devices. For now, Faraday cages don't seem as crazy as they used to, or do they?

5 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Add noise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was working at a defense contractor in the '80's when the whole "Tempest" program started.

    Rather than shield equipment, we simply added a small amount of broadband noise.

    The problem isn't to limit emission: The problem is to frustrate detection.

    1. Re:Add noise by Crashmarik · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Really it's amazing how easy it is for people to forget things like Van Eck phreaking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V... have been around for going on three decades now

    2. Re:Add noise by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'd be curious to know (I'm definitely underinformed, so this is an honest question) whether that tactic has lost some effectiveness over time. The classic monitoring-RF-to-read-CRTs stuff depended on getting an adequately clean copy of the distinctly analog output of the CRT. Now, all signals are fundamentally analog signals; but digital signals are analog signals designed to make guessing the correct value really easy(since there are only two possibilities, rather than an arbitrary number of them); and now more than ever it's a safe guess that sensitive data will be heading over a number of RF-emitting digital busses, from the keyboard to the computer, within the computer, and likely to the monitor as well.

      Does the broadband noise still drown out the desired signal sufficiently to prevent reconstruction, or does our increased emphasis on high-speed digital busses (often designed to operate with some amount of error correction in the event of cheap lousy hardware being cheap and lousy) make it more tractable to either unambiguously pick the correct interpretation of a noisy input, or make a number of guesses and use known features of the bus to help eliminate the incorrect ones?

    3. Re: Add noise by cbelt3 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Properly shielded equipment uses different methods to 'break the cage'. It's been many decades, but some of the heavily shielded designs I did in the 80's involved opto-isolators. Yes, that's right. Want to avoid radiating information ? Use light.

      Keep in mind that the structure of the faraday cage depends on the frequency of the data being transmitted. It does not have to be unbreakable tin foil. Properly sized metal mesh will also do the job. Just ask anyone who tries to get a Wifi signal through an old wall with expanded metal lath and plaster.

  2. Old news and still needs pwned access by ramriot · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Firstly this is old news,
    Secondly almost the first thing said in the video is that they had to install a driver on the target to force it to emit signals they could pull out of the noise. So its a nice idea that if you have access to put software on the PC you can later get it to emit information, but it you are going to do that then why not use what else is there because how often is all the targets other wireless interfaces fully disabled. I suspect unless your name is Snowden, not very often. Further, if you are that worried about leaking information that you go fully air gapped you would not be trusting a malleable OS to run from, much better to run from a live CD.