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Declassified Tempest Material Comes Online
D-Fly writes "John Young, who runs the Cryptome repository of cypherpunk documents, has obtained a small batch of declassified documents from the NSA on TEMPEST monitoring-getting computer data through electromagnetic emissions. Young got the stuff declassified through the Freedom of Information Act, and has appealed their denial of the rest of his request. A lot of what he has received so far is appendixes and tables of contents, and addresses testing equipment to prevent TEMPEST emissions. For a comprehensive archive of what is know about Tempest monitoring, check out a clearing house of information.. "
I think I'm going to be getting a BeAbacus just to be on the safe side.
I believe if you are using cat5 cables, they are already shielded. Ummm. No. It's UTP, for Unshielded Twisted Pair wiring. If you ever pull apart cat 5 wiring, it's got 4 pairs of twisted wires, in either a plenum (burns, but doesn't screw up the air) or riser (doesn't burn, but smokes like all hell) plastic casing. The wire for cable tv is as well. That it is. Central conductor with a generally copper or steel mesh cylindrical shield.
They had one for sale at the 1998 DEFCON in Las Vegas. A very formidable looking PC. Future events may feature some of these devices
A friend demostrated a "tempest" style attack where a telephone was picking up what was being typed at the keyboard in the form of tones. Since he wasn't using any special equipment (just his ear) he couldn't tell exactly what I was typing but was able to narrow the possiblities based on what he was hearing. Some pieces of data that might be the target of an attack aren't even echo'd to the screen. For example, capturing a passphrase might be more valuable that capturing snapshots of an encrypted file.
Please repeat after me: Randy Weaver was cleared of all criminal charges. He did not bunker up and start shooting at people. He did not have illegal weapons. He wasn't even convicted of resisting arrest.
Randy Weaver did not break the law. He was cleared of all criminal charges.
Where did you get it??
If Randy Weaver had shot first, he would have gone to prison for assaulting federal agents. He did not.
It would be possible to shield a CRT, but it wouldn't be pretty. I think the wire mesh in the window of a microwave completes a farady cage that contains its emissions. A device similar to a glare reduction screen could use one of these meshes to reduce emmisions from a CRT, assuming you could wire it into the metal frame of your monitor. Cables can also easily shielded, although it's not cheap. I belive the twisting in Ethernet cables provides a good amount of sheilding already.
TEMPEST is about the most boring subject you could ever hope to study. Use a little common sense when thinking about what could be an antenna, do what you must to avoid antennas from inside to outside, and you will likely have a tempest compliant case. Not that it really matters. If you are really that paranoid about someone finding out about your secrets, then you probably have something to hide. In which case, they would simply take your computer from you and find out what they want to anyhow. In answer to your question though, with the right filters, they can break down EMI into the precise data streams they want. I believe the Russian equipment is probably the best out there for analyzing EMI. Believe this though, you wouldn't want a TEMPEST compliant case. Just imagine having to undo about forty screws to take the side off of your computer. That would get really old.
They didn't want stray RF to be received and decoded from a computer equipment. Lots of special conductive shielding in the cracks where the case opened. Evidently it was very effective, and the army loved them. Its not hard to foil stuff like this. It's probably the more obvious things that provide intelligence leaks ( such as paper with info on it not discarded properly ) that would be more problems than RF leaking from your computer.
I imagine one of those cheap tv tuner cards can be modified, after all, its just rf and a few sync signals.. even sat/cable tv, maybe
I cannot believe people like you actually believe crap like that. The FBI and the DOJ have real jobs, real crime to fight, and why in the hell should anybody feel sorry for people who break the law? I laugh everyday at people who complain about Waco for instance. If that was me in my little apartment, with a dozen Federal Warrants for my arrest, then I go and kill a couple of Federal Agents, then I'd be pushing daises right now. But, not in Waco. Their all heroes! Yeah, whatever. How about if all of you government hating scum leave the US. Go to China. There you will be shot dead, and the bill for the bullet mailed to your family. Whiney sissies like you and the rest of your US hating friends should all be put to death. Leave the US...FOR ALL OUR GOODS!!!
tempest info is available elsewhere
A few years back I was playing sopwith on an old 386 and my dad was playing with a crummy old black and white T.V. that had a manual tuner and he got a really crummy picture of my monitor but you could tell what I was doing. Hopefully the rest of the stuff is declassified so I can Fsck around with TEMPEST alittle more 8-)
um ... what about lcd ... they don't have crt
The cat's out of the bag. I think the NSA should be forced to spill their guts on this rather than just sending us a just a small piece of the pie. We pay their fucking bills we have a right to know what the hell they are doing.
I pity the fool who doesn't think L0pht could hack their way out of a wet paper bag. L0pht is the most talented group in the world, better at coding than Linus and just as good at security as the NSA.
When I interviewed with the NSA back in '87, they were putting up a Faraday office building -- the entire outside was copper, with few windows, those being lead glass or made with embedded wire mesh.
My interview was right after Xmas, so they still had their decorations up. In many of the stairwells, they had pictures of an old-fashioned Santa (like in the old Coca-Cola ads), with his finger up to his lips in the familiar "sshh" gesture. Makes sense that they'd use Santa -- he's sort of the ultimate spy.
When I interviewed with NSA in '87, I saw several TEMPEST-equipped PCs, IBM XTs with heavy cases & small CRTs, which I was told used lead glass (just like fine crystal). ISTR that they cost something around $10-20K, not that money matters to these guys.
Funny how you always want things your way. Yea, lets release this info so some guy can put it on his web page to share with the whole world. Like you really need this info anyway. I'm so sick of the crying about privacy. I say lets keep this private.
Orange book ratings have NOTHING to do with TEMPEST. Classification is sort of security through obscurity but you should realize that obscurity is almost always a Good Thing when dealing with security. You never want to give your enemy any information that they can use againt you. Now the smart person designs a system so that if the information escapes, the system is not compromised but the smart person will never also choose to give out information about their system. I think the main interest in TEMPEST is seeing how much can actually be done in terms of surveilance and such.
I take it you are not aware the Randy Weaver was never convicted of anything, and that he sued the government for $3.5 million and won. Or that the man who shot his wife continued working at the FBI, and was recently revealed (in mainstream media) to have been at Waco, in a tree, with a .308 bolt action.
Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Not many people have accused the gov't of intentionally starting the fire, but they have now admitted to pumping the place full of CS, which is flammable. For six years they denied using CS, and people like you ridiculed the idea that they weren't telling the truth.
A couple of years ago wasn't there work on developing a font that was blurry enough to disrupt snagging a screen capture, yet stable enough for the human eye. I remember this work being developed for linux. Anybody else remember this.
It just slows them down, and will make it more difficult for requests about things we care about (like the TEMPEST documents) go through slower.-k
Since LCD devices use much less power and don't need an outlet you might get away with aluminum foiling a closet (100 DB quieting at 100MHZ) rather than copper plating your house. Also try using flash instead of a hard drive.
score -2 too much information
This is simply a metallic shielding you would put around a device which you didn't want A) signals emitting from or B) didn't signals interfering with the device.
I used to use a setup like this to help contain all the RF noise from Tesla coils. It worked out fairly well. The only problem with using this to shield TEMPEST monitoring is that you also filter the signals (image on your CRT, etc) from reaching the power source otherwise your shielding will be useless.
I saw this on that one cracker site. Hackernews network. i thought it was BS cause i think the hackernews thing is ran by loft and figured it was just some BS like those crackers would make up. I still wonder if its true or not.... last i heard they couldnt hack their way out of a wet paper bag
That cable that runs from your PC to your monitor is a pretty good little antenna. Comerical cables aren't grounded very well and leak radiation. Same goes for your keyboard and mouse cables. Sorry for the AC post but I'm not sure of the current classifaction of this material.
Take a grappling hook and cram it up your ass, tie your hands to a pole and the rope to a semi and have the semi driver pop the clutch.
Thank you.
Moderation suggestion:
Score: -1, Troll
Ok, I've thought about it and I'd rather give up rights for order/security. We don't need rights but we need security. Freedom is pretty much an outdated concept. We need to move towards laws which make people attend church, outlaw bad games, outlaw guns, outlaw bombs, outlaw pornography.
...hey troll! To the showers!
I'm all for the open source movement, and I currently contribute to a large open source project (hint, it ends in BSD), BUT:
Classified stuff is GOOD. Do YOU want the enemy knowing your country's classified secrets?
Cool, neat projects coming out.
I cannot believe people like you actually believe crap like that. The FBI and the DOJ have real jobs, real crime to fight, and why in the hell should anybody feel sorry for people who break the law? I laugh everyday at people who complain about Waco for instance. If that was me in my little apartment, with a dozen Federal Warrants for my arrest, then I go and kill a couple of Federal Agents, then I'd be pushing daises right now. But, not in Waco. Their all heroes! Yeah, whatever. How about if all of you government hating scum leave the US. Go to China. There you will be shot dead, and the bill for the bullet mailed to your family. Whiney sissies like you and the rest of your US hating friends should all be put to death. Leave the US...FOR ALL OUR GOODS!!! We pay the NSA and CIA's bill. So what in the hell right do you have to know what in the hell they know. You are nothing compared to the evil that is in the world. Nothing. Think about how special you would feel in the CIA gave everyone in the country detailed blueprints for a nuclear class weapon. Oh, how warm and fuzzy I feel already. Now, let's estimate how long it would take before some Islamic decided to kill about 50 million "innocent" ,and I mean that loosely, people right near where you live. About 1-3 days. Only near sighted, uneducated, government hating morons would even bother thinking that getting rid of what we have is better than what is out there waiting to get in. Good luck finding a friendly country once you leave. And, do, please leave the US.
How well does temptest equipment work when there's say, 3 moniters, 4 computers, 1 tv, and a mass of other cordless devices filling up the air/area with RF noise? Can they focus on just one source, or is all EM soup? Anyone know?
This sig left intentionally blank.
You KNOW that it is through covert manipulation of commodity markets that is causing LCD screens to be so fscking expensive. Why else? If LCD screens were cheap, "they" couldn't spy on you using Tempest (and would have to fall back on Echelon; poor babies).
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
just like in "Enemy of the State?"
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Some of it might get obliterated by later reformatting, but chances are at least one of the "tags" will survive. In a long document, it's unlikely that a random transcription error will occur twice in exactly the same place, so it's a pretty reliable method.
Another variation on this theme is filling out slightly different spellings of one's name on various forms, and then tracking the dissemination of your info through the junkmail you recieve.
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
huh? Tempest refers to getting sensitive data, not protecting it. In most cases, the getting would probably be illegal as all hell, and at the very least exceptionally immoral. And how is it bad to protect yourself from being spied on?
Anyway, I don't see the problem here.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
One aspect of AI is to mimic humans. This involves mispellings and random gramitical mistakes. Most sucessful AI's that were able to decieve human judges in AI competitions did this.
:)
--
For example, if you are running your monitor at 72 hz, and your TV at 60hz, the signals should be separable.
In addition, if they know what channel you're running your TV on, it's even easier to filter the TV signal out.
(Based on basic principles of EMF.)
They're not trying to decode it into text--they're trying to view it the exact same way you are viewing it--as a video signal.
You going to shield the glass of the CRT?
What about the cable between your video card and monitor.
No computer is completely surrounded. There are big gaping holes--i.e. the floppy bays. If you wanted, you could completely surround it to.
Also, in a similar vein, people could shield their ethernet cables...
Why don't you ask Vicky Weaver about it. Oh, you can't, she was killed by FBI sniper Len Horiuchi. She was holding her ten-month old baby, obviously a deadly threat to the federal agents.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
If I remember correctly, the holes in the shielding material must be smaller than a quarter wavelength of the highest frequency to be blocked.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
These conspiracy nuts / militia people are far more scary than the "evil government" that they claim to want to protect us from. I think it is just this Y2K thing that is causing their numbers to grow... After that is passed hopefully they will put away their John Birch Society membership cards and get on with their lives... or perhaps check into the local mental institution.
Hello "negative_karma" (if that is your real name).
/. login for trolls and karma lowering comments? I've thought about creating a Bat Guano account for just this purpose.
.sig and slyly irreverant user name.
Do you use this
I only ask because of your
You too can become a Federal Target. If you feel that you have been left out.. Waco passed you by, or even possibly you weren't questioned after the OKC bombing.. here's how you can become a small federal target.
After hours of research with fellow Slashdotters who have been the target of "box builders", we can offer you the following points.
1. Get interrested in Tesla, Unified Field Theories, Einstein.. and most importantly High Energy Wave Physics.
2. Go to your local university library and sit by yourself. Read journals and old books about Gravity, Waves, and Grand Unified Field Theories. Don't EVERY check out anything. Don't get a library card. Go to a different university than you went to.
3. Repeat 2 alot. Don't talk about what you think about. You must be serious.
4. When things start getting weird, have confidence that they WON'T kill you. They just want to discourage you. They're very good at their job.
This message was financed and paid for by Current and Former Targets of the Federal Government. (CaFTotFG).
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
a friend of mine have a tempest sparc T-1+. 25mhz (iirc). till he took the mobo and the power supply out of the case and put them on a towel (he couldn't fit two 50pin ribbon scsi drives in the two SCA bays). since then you can't pick up any radio or tv stations in that room.
Microsoft was funding a project to use this to put product serial numbers on the screen so they could drive truck through an office park and pick out software pirates. Honest.
:)
Now why does this NOT surprise me.
My journal has hot
Well, it clearly illustrates the government, despite the fact that the technology was well in place well before 1992, has never heard of spell checkers. Which doesn't surprise me. :)
My journal has hot
Easy: Put a team of hackers to the source code, fix it, and blackmail Billy Gates into submission. Else they release a BUG FREE MS PRODUCT!
As we all know, that's one of the signs of impending apocolypse.
Aside from stemming electronic eavesdropping, these prototypes could open the way to new types of security attacks on computers, Anderson and Kuhn suggest. A virus could be designed to find and then broadcast information stored on a machine without a user's knowledge. The game of spy versus spy goes on.
This is the final paragraph from the Scientific American article referenced above.
Seems like Microsoft's lack of care about their customers' security goes very deep. They're even funding novel ways for crackers to break into computers.
Information is not Knowledge
On the one hand, I don't really see why the NSA is bothering to keep this stuff classified, I mean, since they can sheild stuff (it's required for high end Orange book cert, I think starting at B something...), it's not like releasing this stuff is going to cause the govt. any problems. Any really sensitive data is already going to be under some sort of Orange book reqs and therefore TEMPEST sheilded. Why bother classifying? All I can think of is security through obscurity, don't go telling those geeks how to do this, they might try to do it! (nevermind that a determined person with some physics texts, hardware specs, and FCC regs on interference could figure a lot of this out)
On the other hand, why should we care? I mean, how many people really would bother putting together tempest monitoring gear? It's pretty obvious what one needs to do to sheild vs. tempest monitoring - Faraday cage your computer workspace and filter any power/network/phone cables that enter the cage. The rest of the info is details that really are only needed WRT monitoring.
Am I misreading the issue? Is there something more on either side of this? I think much more interesting for a FOIA search is the CIA connection to drug smuggling (since the CIA IG told Congress that it _did_ in fact happen, I for one want to know just how involved the CIA was, for how long, and why....) But that's another topic...
itachi
Let 'em look by next year it wont do any good, at least by then I plan on having one of those 17inch lcd flat panel displays. If only the govement would realize this. Id bet if they just droped the project, then they coudl afford to subidize and lcd screen.
No, it reads the emissions themselves. The electron beam that draws the pixels on your screen is focussed by extremely strong magnetic or electric fields (depending on the monitor). There is a large voltage drop (~800 Volts) from the back of the tube to the front. As the intensity of the beam changes, so do the magnetic and electric fields generated by the beam. These fluctuations are what the receiver/decoder uses to rebuild the image on another screen.
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
That is not so. Read the links from the above article; TEMPEST refers to BOTH. Classified government and Military equipment can be "TEMPEST certified", meaning that the emissions are adequately contained according to a set standard. A "TEMPEST attack" refers to the detection and decoding of these emissions.
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
I think you just about nailed the donkey's ass to the goal post there. I don't know about you, but the prospect of encasing my entire room in a solid metal cage (wire frame will not kill all emissions, only full metal), with special filtering equipment on the power line does seem to be more than just a "simple solution" as you put it. :)
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/tempest.html#What%20i s
Go to this page, and look around. Specifically, this page:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ih98-tempest.pdf
has direct reference to the use of electronics to decode the signal created by the electron beam. The concept was first executed by wim Van Eck. The signal is so strong in fact, that images have been successfully recovered from over half a kilometer away, through concrete.
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
Well at least Hemos knows how to use the term
TEMPEST. TEMPEST is equivilant to "compromising
emminations". Ads that talk about TEMPEST Monitors
make no sence, other then maybe, Monitors that
emit alot of sh**. The same goes for "TEMPEST
Compliant". On the other hand "I built a TEMPEST
Free comm center", is a sentence that does make
sence.
To be effective, a TEMPEST free room should be
shielded with both a ferric and non-ferrit cage.
(Ferrits should not be kept in cages). This is
to stop all EM propigation. Also you will need
power and phone line filtering, blacked out widows
(Ferrits like some light), and sound proofing.
There are several other things to concider, but I
can't get into that right now, because my sons
ferrit is tring to crawl up my pant leg!
Probably from here:
DIA Information Technology Acquisition Support Center (ITASC)
Fun stuff!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Read my comment regarding LCD's...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
... is how such snooping could pick up stuff from onscreen when said words were via graphics mode, such as Windows using TTF (remembering that words displayed as graphics can't be seen by screen readers for the blind).
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
i don't like YRO because of the name.
"Your Rights Online"
it just sounds like the title to some touchy-feely news segment that one would see on the local 10 o'clock news (right after the weather report, of course).
peep,
bobby
--
Many moons ago I worked at Xerox and knew some of the engineers who worked with Xerox's then new daisy wheel printers. They were trying to get one of the printers Tempest certified. They did all the standard stuff, shielding etc., submitted the printer and it failed. The only feedback was one bit, passed/failed. Make changes. Submit. Fail. Repeat several times.
Finally, I think around the seventh submission, one of the guys at the certification facility had some mercy. He only said one word, "sound".
Consider the difference between a "." and a "W". The printer better not hit the "." as hard as the "W" otherwise it'll just punch holes in the paper. So the printers were designed with multiple impact levels and used different ones for different letters.
They reprogrammed the printer to use the same intemediate impact level for all characters (never mind what that did to print quality) and sure enough the printer was Tempest certified.
We guessed that the differences in sound of the different impact levels were enough that some useful information could be extracted by listening to the printer print. So Tempest isn't just about electronic emissions, it also includes other emissions like sound.
...then electronic emissions are the least of your problems. If you're encrypting (as you should be) and the Feds are interested enough to be snooping around, and you haven't left the country, then you're in Deep Sh*t.
It's all well and good to be concerned about the Bad Guys getting your Sensitive Data, but let's be real: your kneecaps are a lot more vulnerable than your computer. Once everybody protects everything with solid have-something/know-something encryption, then maybe we worry about TEMPEST. Until then, encrypt, and keep a duffel bag ready to head for the border.
(Or ignore me; maybe I'm just one of those loonies who's been watching too many episodes of "The X Files.")
" A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither"--Thomas Jefferson
Think about it...
"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither. " Ben Franklin
It seems from further investigation (reading posts), That this monitoring requires the users to be using a CRT Monitor (or tv). How well would this monitoring technique work on the newer LCD Displays? Or Laptops?
-Tim
they'll be too distracted by the porn on my monitor to check out the serial number
What you described is a principle commonly used in ham radio shacks to isolate radio equipment from harmful interference. My uncle was setting up a radio room in his basement and surrounded the whole thing with a wire screen to keep out unwanted RFI. It's called an RF cage, and apparently it doesn't have to be a solid piece of metal, as there was about two inches of space inbetween each wire. Maybe the spacing just has to be smaller than the length of the wave, but that's just a wild guess. Maybe someone with more physics knowledge than me could answer that.
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Call me a newbie or hopelessly naive, but could someone explain to me why you couldn't just stop these signals by computing inside a faraday cage? As I understood it, an enclosing wire frame will prevent radio emmissions from entering or leaving?
Is there something fundamentally different about TEMPEST-type emmissions? Or is there something fundamentally flawed with my notion of a Faraday cage? Or is this a perfectly valid solution, just that most people don't want to, or don't have access to a big metal cage in which to do their computing?
Well, the feds recently admitted to dumping toxic material over some cities in Minnesota to see what happened. Or something like that. If one of the myths turns out to be true, that opens the door for all the others.
-beme
-beme
1971
I can't remember where, but I seem to remember someone having old TEMPEST-compliant boxes for sale. I'm almost willing to buy one, if not for the utility than for the durability: the pics I saw showed the case to be like a tank. Does anyone have a link or an offer they could make?
---
---
Remember when "Truth, Justice, & the American Way" wasn't contradictory?
--Albert Einstein.
I like lots of people. That doesn't mean I go carting them around the galaxy with me. --Dr. Who
I seem to recall learning in physics last year that completely surrounding an object with some form of conductor will shield it from electromagnetic fields, as well as prevent internal fields from getting out. So if you just plaster your room with tin foil, you should be safe. Just remember to let in some air once in awhile.
:)
Also note that a typical computer is almost completely surrounded by a conductor: the case. Of course, if you are like me, and you have a K7 and a TNT2 in your case, and you find you have to leave the cover off and have an external fan blowing on the damn thing to keep the heat down, then you have a problem. In my situation... well, I couldn't care less if the government looked at what I'm doing. I'm an open source programmer!
-------------
FYI: Some guy at MIT did some work on this on his own a couple of years ago. I bet you can get more info at the MIT site
Hello! I am Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die
one question, you think we pay their bills?
i figure their bills get paid by classified funding. isn't microsoft on trial right now (and trying to get out of it)?
Well, this proves that, as of 1992, the entire government has not been usurped by artificial or alien intelligence.
There's no intelligence to usurp, this is the govnerment of which you're speaking. "dara" represents a unit of "Slashdot Stupidity in the guise of humor" measure, which in this case scored 5 daras per teradips.
Worse than an untouchable, when I reincarnate I'll be lucky to return as bacteria.
I pity the fool who doesn't think L0pht could hack their way out of a wet paper bag. L0pht is the most talented group in the world, better at coding than Linus and just as good at security as the NSA.
Now here's a comment which really does deserve to be moderated up with "Funny." Can you just see this pencil neck AC with a "Mr. T" yellow mohawk and big plastic tortoise shell glasses?
"I pitty the fool" MY ASS!
Worse than an untouchable, when I reincarnate I'll be lucky to return as bacteria.
Tempest is just a stadard that is used by the NSA amd DOD to ensure that nobody monitors their electronic activity from outside a facitity.
Contrary to popular belief, it it **NOT** a device to spy on you. I offer the following:
A) It is illegal for the US Intelligence community to spy on any US citizen or corporation unless authorized by the Attorney General (although I bet she's big on that, given her track record)
B) Do you think that the NSA really cares about your love letters to you five girlfriends around the world?
C) It takes a very concerted effort to get emission collectors close enough to a site to be effective. These collectors don't fit in a briefcase, they are just too complicated and have too many parts. Also, if you are going to keep up surveilance, you have to change out shifts and vehicles, and people have to eat. That kind of activity generates notice.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
I was looking awhile ago for something and I came across MECO.ORG. Seems they have some surplus TEMPEST PC/Monitors for sale.
Anderson and Kuhn's original paper is well worth reading for a very informative look at what Soft Tempest technologies can do for both attack and defence. I strongly recommend against speculating about any part of this technology until you've read this clear and extraordinary paper.
--
Xenu loves you!
The PC was in a heavy duty metal case with no openings. Their was an RF filter (metal mesh) over the opening for the power supply fan. All of the cables were thick, high quality, shielded cables. The monitor was in a special shielded enclosure. The keyboard looked normal but it was noticably heavier than a normal keyboard.
All mechanical joints in the case had RF gasketing material where the parts fit together. Every part in the system or attached to the system had to be TEMPEST certified. You couldn't install a normal I/O board, cable or peripheral without voiding the certification.
I've forgotten the price but it was two or three times the price of a non-TEMPEST equivalent.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The Nazis were no good at keeping secrets. By the time Joe Nazi knew it, the Jews knew as well. As did most other countries. That was no secret.
It is technically possible, but I've yet to see any credible proof that this method works. There are a lot of outside factors that first must be isolated, not to mention tuning in on the right frequency range. I believe it'd take some pretty advanced equipment to make any sense of the radition given from the CRT itself at a reasonable distance. If you know of credible source, or a site that really describes that method in detail, please do tell.
Where as my described method is pretty much industry standard, and is much easier to reconstruct. I've seen it in action.
I'm no expert, but from what little I have read it doesn't read the CRT emissions itself, it reads from other things. Such as the PC card or monitors' frame buffer or whatever. But there are restrictions on distance as its a rather feeble signal. I have little doubt that having multi buffers written to simultaneously, or just random noise on that frequency, would confuse things greatly.
I know nothing I'll say will change your mind, but i'm going to say it anyways. While I can understand why people might be concerned about Echelon, TEMPEST is not in the same league. If the government wants to kill or spy on you, there isn't much you can do about it. There will always be other methods which you're simply not aware of. FOIA in case of TEMPEST is neither necessary, nor very beneficial (as a countermeasure against the gov't).
When you starting implying that "The Government" (Justice Dept.) knowing murdered innocent people, you blow a great deal credibility. Widespread conspiracies are myth.
Surrounding something with a conductor (ie copper wiring cage) to mask out EM transmissions is called a Faraday Cage.
(quick definition here
Nifty stuff here too.
Anything more, just use Google.
POpe
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
OK, I'm not sure if I understand you, but are you complaining because you think we don't want the government to protect its own data? If so, you got it wrong.
I don't like the classification of TEMPEST data and specifications because it makes it difficult for ME to protect MY data. It's the same thing as crypto.
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
The 'r' in "dara" is obviously some sort of secret code. Perhaps it stands for DARPA, which would definitely have a vested interest in this sort of thing. And if you take the 'r' in DARPA and replace it with a 't', it becomes DATPA, which is meaningless. This proves my theory.
:-)
Another alternative is that the CIA is under control of a renegade communist band that fled Russia after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. Notice the "da" in the beginning of both DARPA, data, and dara. And the 't' being changed to an 'r' has to be a secret message; perhaps they want to "transfer" top-secret government information about TEMPEST so they can spy on Microsoft, steal the source code for Windows, and take over the world!
Wait. How can the source code to Windows possibly help them?
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
TEMPEST and its ilk are bad, because they protect governmental/military sensitive data.
It's a poor sort of logic that has to be internally consistent.
---
Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
When you starting implying that "The Government" (Justice Dept.) knowing murdered innocent people, you blow a great deal credibility. Widespread conspiracies are myth.
Yeah, right. You probably don't believe Kennedy was killed by aliens, the philidelphia experiment irradiated apple pie loving American soldiers against their will, Jimmy Hoffa peaks up umpires crotches, or the that the CIA is in league with NOW to get Gloria Steinam elected "Mrs. America" AND president in 2004, in a nihilistic attempt to discredit American politicians in the voter's eyes.
You are sadly mistaken, and clearly naive.
Worse than an untouchable, when I reincarnate I'll be lucky to return as bacteria.
You're confusing broadspread high level malice with low level screwups. When you bunker up in some compound, and start shooting at people you can't expect to be perfectly safe. Even if you personally aren't pulling the trigger. Things get hairy. Everyone's life is on the line.
Civil trials are NOT proof of innocence or guilt. It is a proponderance of the evidence, not beyond a shadow of a dobut. Futhermore, its being reviewed by a layman jury who knows nothing of what it is like to be under fire. The question is, what where they looking at?
Any lawyer worth his weight is capable of painting the Feds as being evil, and can then take admissions of shooting to the bank. But just because a single sniper shot an "innocent" (person not happening to be carrying a gun), doesn't even mean he violated protocol. A jury simply isn't qualified to review such cases. Even if he did violate protocol, it doesn't mean he did so maliciously or even particularly recklessly. Nor does it indicicate higher level involvement. Why do you assume his superiors would want an "innocent" person killed? It is just hogwash...
Because I care:
GUID
Win98 profiling
Professor Spokesman
Astroturf
Ads as news
Video
i can see the console on my pmac 7100/80 on channel 4. it only works if the rabbit ear antenna is at the correct angle, otherwise it just looks like high freq interference. just find an old 7100/80, hook up a monitor running at 60hz 640x480, boot up mklinux, run bitchx or just hit 'a' at the booter to get the bootstrap console. now tune to channel 4 (it might help if you use an old tv) and move the antenna around. you probably won't be able to make out the characters, but you'll at least be able to tell it's the console. btw, i know it's not the monitor or the vga cable leaking the signal cuz i've turned the monitor off and unplugged the video cable and the signal was just as strong. i guess apple didn't ground/shield the case well enough.
Getting all my secrets department"? Uh-huh. More paranoid ravings from the YRO folks. The more YRO read, the less it sounds like a legitimate concern and the more it sounds like the delusions of people who been watching too many "X-Files" episodes. Here's a hint: TV isn't real.
Paranoid rantings? Ok, for the vast majority of the population, who doesn't care what happens to the world as long as they can have a house in the burbs, SUV, 2.5 kids, and no one messes with their bowling night, yes. The NSA has already said in documents released through FOIA, that if you fit into this profile, they're not going to mess with you.
However, the rest of us, who have actually been paying attention to the events of the world, have reason to be nervous. Those of us who have noticed that our rights have been slipping away one by one, those of us who have noticed that the government is wresting control from the people, and those of us who may have been very vocal about their dissatisfaction with having their Constitutional liberties and god-given rights being taken away have a real serious reason to worry. And those of us who have seen the Justice Department kill innocent victims and children at Waco and Ruby Ridge have real reason to be upset.
Granted, the NSA, FBI, CIA, or whatever else government agency is not going to spy on everyone. But if the NSA find reason enough to tap you, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that you will be tapped. What violates national security might interest you. For all I know they could go definately go after ESR next, with all that huge arsenal he has. (HHOS)
Yes there is reason to worry, there is reason to look at the government with a cautious eye. Its people who are completely ignorant who will be the first against the wall when the revolution starts.
My journal has hot
However, the rest of us, who have actually been paying attention to the events of the world, have reason to be nervous.
Maybe you do, and maybe you don't. I am not trying to prove that one way or the other. Personally, some of the things the government does do worry me, and I am concerned about them.
But EMSEC isn't one of them. EMSEC is about as much a violation of your rights as strong crypto is. Note: Not restrictions on strong crypto, but the possestion of it. If EMSEC is a threat to my privacy, then so is strong crypto. See my point?
And those of us who have seen the Justice Department kill innocent victims and children at Waco and Ruby Ridge have real reason to be upset.
Right. The entire DOJ decided, "Hey, let's go kill some innocent people. And children! Make sure you go after the children first! They make the best targets!"
Have you ever been in a firefight? Things are not quite so cut-and-dry as you seem to think. When you start getting shot at, you shoot back at any available target. Otherwise, you'll have a bullet in the brain quicker then you can say "Constituional liberties".
The fact of the matter is, the people at Waco were holed up in a compound, in violation of multiple laws, and shooting at people. The police fired back. What do you expect?
I think it is a shame that some of the people in that compound who were just caught up in the whole thing got hurt, but shit happens. You seem to think the police went out of their way to hurt these people. Did it ever occur to you that it was an accident?
<FLAME SETTING=MILD>
To put it bluntly: Get a grip.
</FLAME>
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I would like to point out something I thought was more relevant about the link and story, which I'd seen a this morning.
These documents were acquired by people submitting paperwork for the Freedom Of Information Act and acting on their beliefs. We can all sit around and argue about Echelon, or worry about some other terrible conspiracy, but I think that until people really start to hold their government responsible for it's actions, things will continue as before and worse.
Ask 'em for the documents. Make em worry about what to classify. Cause the office that checks for classification issues to overload; after all, classification decisions are pretty high level, and the model doesn't scale well. As the office becomes more clogged with requests for information, either they will mess up and release material they wouldn't have otherwise, or they will get so clogged they can't process all of the information coming in and going out.
Take responsiblity for the destiny afforded you by your government. Alone you are nothing, but in groups you are its greatest enemy.
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
There was an interesting sidebar to an article in Scientific American about a year ago describing a technique to hide data on a screen so that the user could not detect it's presence, yet the data could be picked up by Van Eck freaking.
Microsoft was funding a project to use this to put product serial numbers on the screen so they could drive a truck through an office park and pick out software pirates. Honest.
EMSEC (Emissions Security, the name for the security practices the TEMPEST program evolved into) is common practice in the world of Information Assurance today. It mainly consists of buying shielded everythings from certified vendors. IBM is one of them. With simple protections, EMSEC is no problem. Such practices are universal in the military world (even if compliance is not). In the civilian world, as usual, it almost always is not worth the effort.
"Getting all my secrets department"? Uh-huh. More paranoid ravings from the YRO folks. The more YRO I read, the less it sounds like a legitimate concern and the more it sounds like the delusions of people who have been watching too many "X-Files" episodes. Here's a hint: TV isn't real.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
3.1.4 (U) Bit Rate. -- A general term used to express the dara transfer rate of binary digital signals.
clearly indicates the spelling error "dara" instead of "data". Well, this proves that, as of 1992, the entire government has not been usurped by artificial or alien intelligence.
However, since 1992, I can make no assurances. Or that dara represents some coset of the coin data, with more specific meaning (or more general meaning), of some purpose I cannot yet surmise.
Here's the article you were talking about:
From www.sciam.com/1998/1298issue/1298techbus4.html
And like a predictable villian from a tired James Bond movie:
Of course Microsoft wouldn't abuse this technology, right? They may sneak the GUID serial number into user's documents, track users' PCs who install Windows 98, pay your college professors to push their products, organize an astroturf campaign to fake support for their DOJ lawsuit, disguise advertisements as news stories, and fake evidence during their DOJ trial, but they're honest, dammit!
Sorry if there are any typos in this, but it's hard to type when you have your head buried in the sand.
GUID: //www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,33413,00.html
Win98 profiling: //www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19990312S0008
Professor Spokesman: /chronicle.com/data/articles.dir/art-44.dir/issue- 33.dir/33a03001.htm
Astroturf: http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/BUSINESS/UPDATES/ lat_microsoft0410.htm
Ads as news: //www.thestandard.net/articles/display/0,1449,6087 ,00.html?home.bf
Video: //www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/17938.htm l
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.