Re: Low heat computers harder to spy on ?

It does have to do with spying.

Electro magnetic fields are generated by the processor and other stuff.

These can be measured.

My question is basically if low power devices have lower "electro magnetic field signatures" as high powered ones.

I would aspect the answer to be yes.

So low heat/low power computers probably harder to spy on them high heat/high power computers.

Bye, Skybuck.

Measured yes, data read not really. There are lots of lines carrying lots of signals, the jumbled result is just a total jumble.

Of all the spying in the world, I'm betting precisely zero of it is done this way. It just wouldnt make sense to.

NT

And remove the mains/batteries...

Casper

Alright, who broke the 13 year old mentality idiot filter AGAIN!???

Mine works, but if people continue to reply ... (guilty)

Casper

Not so sure about that. Look up 'TEMPEST'.

But processor power is probably low on the list of vulnerabilities.

Jeroen Belleman

Back in the TTL days maybe. A van could sit outsode your house and capture your keystrokes, because in the jumbled mess, that one can be descriminated. The other one was your CRT, which could also be re- assembled from 'loose rf data'.

This is what sparked the entire "Tempest" screening regimen in use these days.

But emissions are a lot less because switching voltages are a lot less. Computers are in plastic, unshielded cases now, and back then they had two case classes.

I still buy all metal cases, and still make sure all the panel EMI touch tabs are made bare metal and conduct to my conductive epoxy scratch pads I apply to their target locations in the case.

I have made rugged, not quite weather tight TAC-4 RISC based portable computers for the big guys in the past. The "Tempest compliant" EMI shield that we placed over the LCD display panel were 2mm thick and optically coated, and had copper foil rings around the perimeter, and were $450 each... 20 years ago. for a 17" 4:3 display.

There were no jumbled mess of signals leaking from that thing. NONE.

Casper H.S. Dik wrote in news:54b6336b$0$2870 $ snipped-for-privacy@news2.news.xs4all.nl:

RF at frequences of over 30KHz is typically attenuated to the point of indetectibity by 1m of seawater. ==> immerse computer + operator under a minimum of 2m of seawater and take precautions to ensure they remain continuously immersed.

Don't let NT fool you- he's probably a spook spreading disinformation.

We know from unclassified information on TEMPEST

Best turn your computer off and avoid any connections with the internet.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Bwuahahahahaha I like this one!

A video of someone working on a machine, sitting next to a coral reef with the fishies swimming past would make a great screensaver.

Scrolling message...

"I am currently unavailable... This may even be me..."

" Measured yes, data read not really. There are lots of lines carrying lots of signals, the jumbled result is just a total jumble. "

This is probably incorrect. One example which has recently been discovered is auto-spelling-correction of text document processing applications.

Hence the foolishness of "spelling freaks". The activity of the processor is so high that it is detectable and possibly distinquishable.

Perhaps add a bit of fourrier transform to filter out some background noise and it's a possible security concern.

More high activity processes on pc's and mobile devices will probably be discovered soon enough.

Video processing comes to mind, perhaps even viewing pictures, for a short activity spike.

Even torrenting,hashing and bitcoining come to mind.

" Of all the spying in the world, I'm betting precisely zero of it is done this way. It just wouldnt make sense to. "

Spying on a mobile device would be easy peasy with these techniques.

First of all mobile devices produce lots of electro magnetic radiation.

Second access to them is quiet easy.

By coincincende today a woman put her mobile phone on a table, maybe she was secretly recording my conversion... I don't know about that.

If I had a mobile phone with an electroc magnetic radation detector build in on it or so... I could have easily placed it next to her's.. and perhaps spy on her SMS traffic or calls.

Bye, Skybuck.

THAT is NOT the source that "spies" use. Just look at the telephone line (dial-up, DSL) or cable that you use to connect to the internet. Easy pickings for governments. Ours have been doing this illegal crap for quite a while; ever hear about PRISM? Power level of te computer,like i said,has NOTHING to do with that. Wake up.

Ofcourse it does,

It can be proven with logic reasoning by inverting the logic.

If your computer were 100 billion gigawats of power everytime you press the letter A while it should have been B then the whole world will know ! LOL.

Bye, Skybuck.

damn, rumbled

NT

As an experiment I sat my Icom IC-R20 next to my USB keyboard and noted that the radio would indeed pick up a signal as I hit each key. My next step is to record several samples from each keypress and see if I can implement a recognizer using Mathematica. My guess is that I will be able to easily distinguish between each keypress.

The effective range might be small using my equipment, but a very directional antenna and a brick-wall roofing filter in front of a single signal receiver could probably do a heck of a lot better.

I guess the point is, the signals generated by a modern computer don't all amass into a jumble as each subsystem or device probably has a pretty unique fingerprint in the EM spectrum, and with a bit of radio and programming knowledge (not anything magical mind you) one could probably get the login and passwords of a target, which are the keys to the castle.

Really paranoid people use special color schemes designed to be difficult to reproduce if there were an eavesdropper demodulating the monitor's emissions, and enter their passwords using the on-screen keyboard already. I suppose they know more than most people eh?

IF....IF....IF....IF....IF....IF....IF.... and IF pigs had wings they could fly