NSA coughs up secret TEMPEST specs ... posted on Cryptome

[solaar () hushmail com]

NSA coughs up secret TEMPEST specs

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/15743.html

The first of several documents related to the US government's TEMPEST programme,
 obtained by Cryptome.org's John Young under a Freedom of Information Act 
(FOIA) request, have been posted on his Web site. His original request was 
denied, but the persistent Young sought an appeal of that decision, which 
was recently granted in his favour. 

No one is quite sure what TEMPEST stands for (some say it's an acronym for: 
Telecommunications Electronics Material Protected From Emanating Spurious 
Transmissions". Others say it is a nothing more than a code word), but what 
it means is quite simple: electromagnetic and acoustic signals which can 
be remotely detected and interpreted by a spy. 

We live in a veritable ocean of electromagnetic radiation, produced by every 
gizmo we use at home and at work. They all produce signals; and believe 
it or not, our input to the devices, and their output, create modulations 
which can be 'read'. 

The video signals leaking from your monitor change as you type using a text 
editor or word processor. It is (just barely) possible to capture the signals 
and correlate these changes with the actual text, enabling a spy to read 
over your shoulder, so to speak. 

Practically speaking, reading the signals from a person's monitor is no 
longer feasible, as they are now well shielded due to health paranoia. But 
then, modems are a notoriously loud class of item, from which the 'noise' 
can easily be overheard and reconstructed. So are speaker phones, intercoms,
 outdated CRT monitors, much R&D equipment, you name it. They're all loud 
enough to be monitored without the physical implantation of any bugging 
device.

Electrical wiring and telephone lines can transmit such signals by conduction; 
walls can vibrate subtly, as can pipes, beams, ducts, and the like. The 
only fix is to silence the equipment, or to actively distort its signal 
emanations.

The NSA's concern, obviously, is any government equipment which process 
national security information in plain text. Hence its TEMPEST programme,
 which explains how to shield equipment and buildings against such exploitation.

And now, thanks to Young, we will all soon be able to figure out how to 
make our electronic equipment as quiet as the government's. This could be 
quite useful to academic and corporate researchers, whose activities are 
of sufficient value to make them targets of TEMPEST-style exploitation.

It will also offer great comfort to the many paranoid boneheads whose egos 
dispose them to imagine that their deluded rants are of interest to national 
security operators. Many a blissful hour may now be spent pulling down walls 
and ceilings and ripping the guts out of suspect computers, televisions,
 telephones, stereos, microwave ovens, clocks and radios.

Hey, if it keeps them off the streets, we're all for it.