Of Computers and Signals Intelligence history: TEMPEST

[kallistii]

Anyone who has read Stephenson's Cryptonomicon knows about "van Eck" radiation, that is, the electromagnetic signals that a computer emits that can be picked up and decoded, allowing another person to see exactly what you are doing on your computer, without you having any way of knowing they are doing it.

Recently, The US National Security Agency declassified a wonderful history of this type of evesdropping from their internal, classified magazine, and made the PDF of it available on their web site:

http://www.nsa.gov/public/pdf/tempest.pdf

It is titled "TEMPEST: A Signal Problem", and it gives a history of how intelligence agencies have been using this effect, going back as far as World War II! Basically, as long as encyrption has been done electronically, it has been vulnerable to being read remotely.

But they tell the story better than I can, go, and read the article!

ttyl

Comments

[shrike-15.livejournal.com]

Good to know it takes sometimes only a piece of paper to be safe from interception. ,-> Would I knew what they still keep secret, there were many paragraphs towards the end.... Hmm, seismic influences?!