Active Countermeasures Against Tempest Attacks

[Gregory Hicks]

> Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 23:43:28 -0800
> From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart at pobox.com>
> 
> At 09:14 AM 03/10/2003 -0500, Arnold G. Reinhold wrote:
> >On the other hand, remember that the earliest Tempest systems
> >were built using vacuum tubes. An attacker today can carry vast amounts
[...snip...]
> 
> Basically, if you've got a serious threat of TEMPEST attacks,
> you've got serious problems anyway...

Actually, quite a bit of the TEMPEST framework is not stopping an
adversary from reading what you have on your CRT (or display), but
denying the adversary the wherewithal for figuring out that you ARE
there.

It would really be the pits to have someone standing off over the
horizion and saying...  "Hm-m-m...  70Mhz over THERE?  Why is a monitor
over THERE?  There shouldn't be ANYTHING over THERE...  Hm-m-m..  Who
do we know that uses..."  Well, you get the idea.

TEMPEST equipment is specially shielded so that it does not leak ANY RF
energy that can be picked up on RF direction finding equipment.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Gregory Hicks                        | Principal Systems Engineer
Cadence Design Systems               | Direct:   408.576.3609
555 River Oaks Pkwy M/S 6B1          | Fax:      408.894.3400
San Jose, CA 95134                   | Internet: ghicks at cadence.com

"The trouble with doing anything right the first time is that nobody
appreciates how difficult it was."

When a team of dedicated individuals makes a commitment to act as
one...  the sky's the limit.

Just because "We've always done it that way" is not necessarily a good
reason to continue to do so...  Grace Hopper, Rear Admiral, United
States Navy


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