Your Computer is Hot -- And I Know Where You Live

["Fergie" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

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Annalee Newitz rocks. :-)

[snip]

This morning at the Chaos Communication Congress, Cambridge Ph.D. student
Steven Murdoch knocked everybody's socks off with a presentation about how
people can unmask an anonymous online publisher by remotely monitoring his
computer's temperature.

It sounds about as tin foil hat as you can get, but the trick is real.
Every computer's clock is run via quartz crystals, but those crystals
change their speeds as the computer heats up. Therefore a computer's clock
runs nanoseconds faster or slower depending on the overall temperature of
the unit. This process is called clock skew, and it creates a uniquely
off-kilter time "fingerprint" for every computer.

[snip]

More:
http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2006/12/your_computer_i.html

- - ferg

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--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


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