Optical Hacking

Is this really a new idea?

http://www.antionline.com/printpost....&postid=501262

Ya know, I had a professor who used to work for the Navy -- Black Ops type of stuff. Go into foreign countries, break in steal data, that sort of thing. They had the technology to read your monitor by the EM emissions coming off your monitor through the ducts -- you could be in a completely sealed room and read what was on their screen.

And that was 20-25 years ago.

If they want it, they'll get it. Just imagine what kinda of tech they use now that we don't know about.

DarkGuardian> Thant is also known as VanEck Phreaking. The system used is called Tempest.

Souleman: I was not aware of that -- thanks for the info, he never mentioned an name for the system, just that you could do it.

PGP version 6.0 and later have a "secure viewer" that they say reduces the amount of EMR emitted by the monitor using specialy made font/background and foreground colors (kindof a gray on gray!) making tempest attacks harder (though I'm sure it can be overcome...)

I guess the same technique might be used for the reflection attacks: use a light gray fonts on darker gray background. Also the article/post mentionned 640x480 resolution on what I guess would be an avreage size monitor (17' ?)... I wonder if they can acheive as good results with 1600x1200 res on a 19'?

Ammo

damn, more worries for everyone, i bet the government will take use of that and:
"Bend over America, because you are taking this one." God help us all...