- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Soft Tempest
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To: ukcrypto(a)maillist.ox.ac.uk Subject: It is really me - the story of Soft Tempest Date: Sun, 08 Feb 1998 15:09:40 +0000 From: Ross Anderson <Ross.Anderson(a)cl.cam.ac.uk> Bruce Sterling, and others, have asked of the Washington Post story [see below]: > Is this story correct? The Washington Post gives a highly distorted account of some very important scientific work we have done. I suggest that list members read our paper - <www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ih98-tempest.pdf> - for themselves before getting carried away. The story is as follows. Bill G gave our department $20m for a new building, and his people said that what they really wanted from our group was a better way to control software copying. So it would have been rather churlish of us not to at least look at their `problem'. Now the `final solution' being peddled by the smartcard industry (and others) is to make software copying physically impossible, by tying program execution to a unique tamper-resistant hardware token. We wouldn't like to see this happen, and we have already done a lot to undermine confidence in the claims of tamper-proofness made by smartcard salesmen. So Markus and I sat down and tried to figure out what we could do for the Evil Empire. We concluded that (1) large companies generally pay for their software; (2) if you try to coerce private individuals, the political backlash would be too much; so (3) if the Evil Empire is to increase its revenue by cracking down on piracy, the people to go after are medium sized companies. So the design goal we set ourselves was a technology that would enable software vendors to catch the medium-sized offender - the dodgy freight company that runs 70 copies of Office 97 but only paid for one - while being ineffective against private individuals. We succeeded. In the process we have made some fundamental discoveries about Tempest. Army signals officers, defence contractors and spooks have been visibly flabberghasted to hear our ideas or see our demo. In the old days, Tempest was about expensive hardware - custom equipment to monitor the enemy's emissions and very tricky shielding to stop him doing the same to you. It was all classified and strictly off-limits to the open research community. We have ended that era. You can now use software to cause the eavesdropper in the van outside your house to see a completely different image from the one that you see on your screen. In its simplest form, our technique uses specially designed `Tempest fonts' to make the text on your screen invisible to the spooks. Our paper tells you how to design and code your own. There are many opportunities for camouflage, deception and misconduct. For example, you could write a Tempest virus to snarf your enemy's PGP private key and radiate it without his knowledge by manipulating the dither patterns in his screen saver. You could even pick up the signal on a $100 short wave radio. The implications for people trying to build secure computer systems are non-trivial. Anyway, we offered Bill G the prospect that instead of Word radiating the text you're working on to every spook on the block, it would only radiate a one-way function of its licence serial number. This would let an observer tell whether two machines were simultaneously running the same copy of Word, but nothing more. Surely a win-win situation, for Bill and for privacy. But Microsoft turned down our offer. I won't breach confidences, but the high order bit is that their hearts are set on the kind of technology the smartcard people are promising - one that will definitively prevent all copying, even by private individuals. We don't plan to help them on that, and I expect that if they field anything that works, the net result will be to get Microsoft dismembered by the Department of Justice. Meantime we want our Soft Tempest technology to be incorporated in as many products as possible - and not just security products! So to Rainier Fahs, who asked: > If these rumors are true, I guess we will face a similar discussion on > free availability in the area of TEMPEST equipment. Does privacy > protection also include the free choice of protection mechanism? I say this: our discovery, that Tempest protection can be done in software as well as hardware, puts it beyond the reach of effective export control. So yes, you now have a choice. You didn't before, Ross Anderson ---------- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-02/07/060l-020798-idx.html British Technology Might Flush Out Software Pirates By John Burgess Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, February 7, 1998; Page H01 CAMBRIDGE, England It's a technique that intelligence agencies have used for years: Park a van filled with monitoring gear near an embassy and listen for the faint radio signals that computers routinely emit when they are on. Analyze those signals for clues to the data that are on the computers. Now researchers at the University of Cambridge, home of groundbreaking work in intelligence over the years, are trying to adapt this technology to the fight against software piracy. With special code written into software, they say, computers could be made to broadcast beacons that would carry several hundred yards and identify the software they were running, complete with serial numbers of each copy. Vans run by anti-piracy groups could pull up outside a company's office and count the number of software signals emanating from it. If, say, 50 beacons for a particular title were detected but the company had licensed only two copies of the software, that could become evidence on which a court would issue a search warrant. Ross Anderson, a University of Cambridge lecturer who is overseeing the project, said the idea originated last year when Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates visited the university after his private foundation announced a $20 million donation to the school. Gates told officials that, among other things, he would love the university to come up with new anti-piracy techniques. So far, Microsoft isn't enthusiastic about the university's approach, Anderson said. "They have some reservations. Obviously there are Big Brother aspects," he said. A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company has no plans to adapt the technology. Emilia Knight, a vice president at BSA Europe, a trade group that combats software piracy, said such an anti-piracy system might be technically feasible. But she noted many practical questions on the legal side, such as how the system would differentiate between companies pirating software and those legally using multiple copies of programs. Knight said that concerns of privacy and consumer rights might make the system a no-go for industrialized countries. But in places like Eastern Europe, she suggested, where piracy is rampant and there is no tradition of such protections, the software signal detectors might be acceptable. Richard Sobel, a political scientist who teaches at Harvard University and researches privacy issues, called it "an appalling idea." "If the technology is there to identify what software people are using, there's the prospect to figure out what people are doing. . . . It sounds like a horrible violation of privacy," Sobel said. In Britain, however, it might seem less controversial. Here authorities have long used similar techniques to ferret out people who fail to pay the annual license fee of about $150 that the law requires for each TV set in the country. Cruising the streets here are vans carrying equipment that can detect emissions from a TV set's "local oscillator," the part that turns a station's signal into a picture. If the gear senses a TV set inside a house from which there is no record of a license payment, this is used as evidence to levy fines. The system also can tell what channel people are watching because the oscillator gives off a slightly different signal for each one. Anderson's researchers have built a prototype that can detect the type of software running on a machine from short range -- the hallway outside the room where the computer is running. Anderson said they are ready to build prototype hardware with a longer range, at a cost of about $15,000-$30,000 -- if the lab can find a customer. So far, none has stepped forward. © Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company ---------- Date: Sat, 7 Feb 1998 13:05:45 -0500 From: Stewart Baker <sbaker(a)steptoe.com> To: ukcrypto <ukcrypto(a)maillist.ox.ac.uk> Subject: Ross, Is that really you? Today's Washington Post claims that a Cambridge research team led by one Ross Anderson is developing technology that would require all personal computers to broadcast the identity of all programs they are running so that anti-piracy investigators can sit outside universities and businesses and check to see whether the folks inside are running more programs than their licenses allow. The article says that even Microsoft thinks this might go too far in invading the privacy of computer users. But advocates for the technology claim that it will work fine in benighted Eastern European countries where piracy is rampant and the natives are used to having their privacy invaded. This raises at least three questions: 1. Is this story correct? 2. If so, is the Ross Anderson it describes the same Ross Anderson known on this list for his attacks on Big Brother? 3. If so, are we to understand that Ross objects not so much to invading privacy as to government competition in that endeavor? Stewart Baker

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17 Dec '03

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Re: the best justice money can buy --Lessig (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Fri, 06 Feb 1998 21:13:43 -0800 > Original-From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart(a)pobox.com> > Subject: Re: the best justice money can buy --Lessig (fwd) > At 08:21 AM 2/6/98 -0600, Jim Choate wrote: > > Let's give the market another 5-10 years and see where Linux > >stands. Right now the estimate is 6-10 million users world wide use it. Share > >wise that isn't a lot. The reason that Linux garners so much press right now > >is that it is in fact an exception when an organization uses the software > >(eg NASA). The test will be whether it grows significantly over the long > >run and not the 5 years that Linux has been a serious os. > > Sharewise, that's not bad for a system that had 1 million users a > year or two ago, though of course it gains a lot of extra slack > because it's quasi-free Unix on an affordable platform. I agree. > Getting that much desktop support without running MSOffice is > impressive. Is it? The vast majority of those users are non-commercial users. The number of US users, currently estimated at 6M is *not* significantly different than the number of home users of C64's and Amiga's (both machines had a very poor commercial market penetration) and also had maximum market penetrations in the 6M range. This consistency would seem to indicate to me that there is a significant overlap in the home users and the Linux community and that this community stays reasonably stable as a constant percentage of total population and not the software alone. The question at this point is how will this number change over the next 2 years or so. If we don't see a significant rise in this percentage then I would suspect Linux will never succeed in making a serious bid for MS parity. It is still a rare thing for an employer to provide Linux as a the default os on a new-hires pc. How many companies do you know that when a person comes in and configures their pc it contains Linux by default? Not many. Further that percentage is *not* increasing at any sort of significant rates. I would prophecy that you will have to wait a long(!) time before you can expect your local grocery store (HEB here uses Win95 and various Unix'es for back-office and check-out) or bank to be using it as a de facto standard. Also, considering that the folks who are making money on Linux are the distributors. How have they faired over the last 4-5 years? If you go to your 1st year Linux Journals (only 12/yr. and the Feb. 98 is #46) and compare it to your current issue how do the number of distributors fair? It turns out there are only a few major distirbutors (Red Hat, Slackware, InfoMagic, Walnut Creek, SuSE) and some of the early distributors have seen a significant decrease in their market share (eg Ygddrasil). So even in the Linux community we have seen a *decrease* in the *commercial* enterprises who have succeeded? Why? Because users like to have the same distribution as their friends so that they have some hope of resolving their problems. So what you see (and this is from my 4+ years working with Linux user groups) is that the majority of members of a given user group will have only 1 or 2 distributions and unless you have one of those most of them will be very hesitant to work on it because of the ignorance factor of the special features and changes of each distribution. The local Austin Linux Group (alg-l(a)lists.io.com) for example is moving currently from Red Hat to SuSE because of the superior, and propietary - I would add, X-windows and RPM modifications they have made. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate, | | but the desire to edit somebody elses words. | | | | Sign in Ed Barsis' office | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Re: Soft Tempest
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Much praise is due Markus and Ross for their astonishing accomplishment in long-neglected Tempest research. Their paper is surely causing sleeplessness in dens of TEMPESTed security agencies accustomed to having singular self-privacy and others-invasiveness via this technology. Microsoft is to be praised for funding the right thing for the wrong reasons, or perhaps Mr. Gates foresaw what the outcome would be and merely needs intel deniability, nicely aided by Ross's zipperedness -- that, too, well done. The Wash Post spin of the story is itself complicitous, as was Mr. Baker's enticement. Thanks to both for aiding the incovert global revelation.

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No Subject
by Veral 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

CAn I join? Your Pal, V.

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Another Linus market observation...
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, Another Linux market observation that would indicate that the total impact of Linux is going to be less than what we as Linux supporters would want is the literature that has arisen about Linux. In particular the count of monthly magazines. Linux has a roughly 6M user market penetration yet there is only a single Linux specific magazine available. In the comparative markets of C64 and Amiga there were several (eg Amiga World, Info, Compute!) magazines. Even today there are at least 3 Amiga magazines on the market yet that machine hasn't been actively manufactured in over 2 years. Why is the Linux magazine market limited to The Linux Journal? And what does that mean for the long term strength of the market (and by extension the hurdles other OS's would face in the future)? ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate, | | but the desire to edit somebody elses words. | | | | Sign in Ed Barsis' office | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Re: the best justice money can buy --Lessig (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Subject: Re: the best justice money can buy --Lessig (fwd) > Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 11:59:01 -0600 (CST) > From: ichudov(a)algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home) > Jim Choate wrote: > > succeed in making a serious bid for MS parity. It is still a rare thing for > > an employer to provide Linux as a the default os on a new-hires pc. How many > > companies do you know that when a person comes in and configures their pc it > > contains Linux by default? Not many. Further that percentage is *not*S > > This is true, but you have to keep it in the right perspective. The > much more interesting question is a broader one: how widespread is GNU > copyrighted freeware? Outside of Linux applications? Very small. I have never worked for a company nor dealt with a customer who as a matter of course used GNU software and was in fact the accepted cannon of that companies computer use policies. Students, individual hobbyist, and small companies (one of the reasons I focus on SOHO in my consulting) are the marked exceptions. The reason these folks can get away with it is their customers if they have any are concerned about the end product and not the process. This isn't true of larger companies who are as concerned with the process because of the impact of budgets, quality control, purchasing, etc. > One can configure a Sun workstation so that it looks, works and feels like > a Linux system, runs things like elm, fvwm2, vim, GNU utilities, > and so on. I have seen a lot of such configurations, and in fact I do > use one like that myself. As I do, I have a ELC and a Tadpole 3XP that I use Linux on as well as Solaris. I also have a IBM N40 RS/6000 laptop that I run AIX 3.x and PPC Linux on. I've been waiting 2 years for the Linux68k to be ported to the Sun 4/380 platform so I can get rid of BSD on that machine, and the /dev/fb for the Tadpole on Linux SPARC has been in the wings about that long as well. In the Austin area (1M pop.), I have yet to find a single other soul who as a matter of course uses Linux on those platforms. At best I know of about a dozen people who play with it and every case I am the one who got them the CD and prompted their activity. My experience would indicate the interest and by extension future is not there for these platforms except as a point of esoteric interest. Believe me, I *wish* I had more people to talk to and work with on these platforms. I can kill just about any discussion in a Linux user group meeting by asking about SPARC or PPC versions, nobody (figuratively) uses them and nobody is really interested in learning about them. I know of only a couple of articles in the Linux Journal that has even discussed SPARC Linux (and that would indicate a lot of folks don't use it) and have never seen a PPC article. > How many millions more of these do exist? Very few. The total number of SPARC or PPC (not Mac mkLinux) is measured in the 10's of thousands at best. Consider that out of all the Linux distributors only a couple carry SPARC or PPC versions. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate, | | but the desire to edit somebody elses words. | | | | Sign in Ed Barsis' office | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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GNU market penetration...
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, I have a question, after going to the GNU homepage (www.gnu.org) I have not been able to find out the numbers of how many if any corporate subscribers and participants to the GNU Foundation. Is there anyone out there who might have a pointer to this information, or better yet is an actual participant in the GNU heirarchy and can discuss these and related issues? Thanks. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate, | | but the desire to edit somebody elses words. | | | | Sign in Ed Barsis' office | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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RE: SOFT TEMPEST
by WebWarrior3＠InfoWar.Com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Several of the servers where I work have multiple monitors. While it is rare that I have several instances of the same application being displayed on these monitors, I do, at times, do just that. Easier for cutting and pasting large blocks from one to the other as well as other editing of code. So, when the software police pull up outside of my place of business see that there are six instances of a program being displayed with one license I can expect a warrant to be issued? That would suck. Unfortunatley, I do not have the time to read through the entire document at the URL provided, and can't save it either from the .pdf ... the defensive measures sound interesting. Also, does this only work with CRTs or can it detect LCD too? Furthermore, it was written: >So Markus and I sat down and tried to figure out what we could do for >the Evil Empire. We concluded that >(1) large companies generally pay for their software; >(2) if you try to coerce private individuals, the political backlash > would be too much; >so >(3) if the Evil Empire is to increase its revenue by cracking down on > piracy, the people to go after are medium sized companies. I have worked on contract with several 'large' companies who are running illegal copies of software, often without the knowledge of the sys admin...better check those 'findings.' Scott R. Brower http://www.infowar.com http://www.efflorida.org

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New x86 clones & Linus Torvalds (Linux fame)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > X-within-URL: http://techweb.cmp.com/eet/column1/wintel19.html > HOT X86 CHIPS FOR '98 AND BEYOND > > > [INLINE] Launching yet another x86 microprocessor into a field already > crowded with clones isn't a good way to bet your company's future. But > that's just what two startups and one CPU stalwart are doing, in a bid > to beat Intel at its own game. > > The new ventures--Centaur Technology Inc. (Austin, Texas) and > Transmeta Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.)--and long-time player Advanced > Micro Devices Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) each has its own twist on what > it will take to survive in the cutthroat x86 world in 1998 and beyond. > Let's take them one at a time. > > Centaur, founded by renowned microprocessor architect Glenn Henry, is > focusing on the low end of the market, where sub-$1,000 desktop > machines and sub-$2,000 notebooks rule. Centaur's offering, launched > only a few months ago, is called the IDT WinChip C6 ("IDT" stands for > Integrated Device Technology Inc., which owns Centaur). It's a > Pentium-class processor that supports the MMX multimedia > instruction-set extensions, a Socket-7 interface, and comes in speed > grades of 180-MHz and 200-MHz. Centaur is positioning the C6 as a > direct alternative to Intel's Pentium with MMX, AMD's K6, and Cyrix's > 6x86MX microprocessors. > > From a design standpoint, what's interesting about the C6 is that > Henry chose not to follow the reigning trends in chip architecture. > Instead, he took a downsized approach, implementing just those > features he needed to deliver decent performance in a high-volume, > low-cost CPU. > > "The biggest thing we did is throw out conventional thinking," Henry > told me when we met recently. "We came to the conclusion that the > added benefit of a lot of computer-science things wasn't worth the > effort. We're not superscalar--we don't do out-of-order execution. > Everyone else is designing 4-way superscalar processors, so we did a > 6-way chip." > > In designing the C6, Henry said his team found that, as CPU clock > speeds approach 200-MHz, nearly half the time is spent waiting on the > bus. So, Henry outfitted the C6 with a huge translation-look-aside > buffer, as well as a second-level TLB, to reduce bus utilization and > cut that wait-time to the bone. > > Also notable is the fact that Centaur is a tiny outfit that began life > a scant two years ago. "Intel would like the world to believe it takes > tens of years and dozens of people to design a microprocessor," Henry > said. Looking at the results rolling out of Centaur, it's obvious what > a dedicated group of engineers can accomplish. > > Over at AMD, a somewhat larger engineering team is already burning the > midnight oil to design the K7 (code-named "Argon"), which will compete > with Intel's upcoming 64-bit Merced CPU. > > AMD has a project team hard at work on K7, but has leaked few details. > Publicly, AMD wants to talk more about its new MMX-enhanced K6 > processors. But K7 will be the key to AMD's long-term future, since a > 64-bit chip is a must-have for any company that wants to remain a > viable alternative to Intel. > > The few details we do know emerged in October in a keynote speech at > the Microprocessor Forum by AMD chairman Jerry Sanders. He said that > the K7 will run at clock speeds in excess of 500-MHz and will come in > a module that's mechanically--though not electrically--interchangeable > with Intel's Slot 1 connector. Most interesting was the news that K7 > will use the bus protocol developed by Digital Equipment Corp. for its > Alpha EV-6 processor. > > It's not clear how far along AMD is with the K7. Indeed, it will be a > daunting task. But AMD has two things going for it in its quest. > First, it is very strong in the simulation and verification > department--an important factor in avoiding design flaws like the > floating-point bug that struck Intel and its Pentium. > > More important, AMD knows what it's like to wrestle with design > delays, which struck its K5 project. Concerns on the K6 job were > reportedly behind AMD's decision to purchase NexGen in January, 1996. > Indeed, the NexGen team provided the Nx586 core, which became the > basis for the K6. > > The third, and potentially most interesting, effort involves > Transmeta, a startup formed less than three years ago by former Sun > Microsystems chip architect David Ditzel. Initial word had Transmeta > at work on a PowerPC clone. Then, the buzz was that the company was > designing a Java chip aimed at the nascent market for low-cost network > computers. Now, it seems that Transmeta's effort is focused more on an > x86 alternative that boasts either low-power, multimedia or > network-computer capabilities. Or perhaps all three. > > One interesting tidbit to emerge from Transmeta is the news that it > has hired Linus Torvalds, the designer of the Linux operating system. > Apart from Torvalds' considerable software skills, he's plugged into > an influential community of Unix programmers, which could give > Transmeta a big leg up in any effort to design a processor tuned to > handle real-world networked applications. > > Alexander Wolfe is EE Times' Managing Editor for computers and > communications ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate, | | but the desire to edit somebody elses words. | | | | Sign in Ed Barsis' office | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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