Well, the first one's a little "Hey this is scary give us some grant money"-ish. This has zero impact on real-world telecom systems in terms of detecting actual payloads BUT detecting some of the management channel info (via the external DS1 management channel) could actually matter in some cases. I'm still waiting for someone to put a trojan into the telecom control channels causing them to randomly reprovision themselves. That could have an impact that far exceeds mere PR... -TD
From: Chris Kuethe <chris.kuethe@gmail.com> Reply-To: Chris Kuethe <chris.kuethe@gmail.com> To: die@dieconsulting.com CC: Tyler Durden <camera_lumina@hotmail.com>, sunder@sunder.net, cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net Subject: Re: Optical Tempest FAQ Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 23:39:33 -0700
On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 01:01:57 -0500, Dave Emery <die@dieconsulting.com> wrote:
... In fact the greater hazard may sometimes be from red, yellow or green LEDs on the front of equipment that are directly driven with real data in order to allow troubleshooting - recovering data from one of those at a distance using a good telescope may be possible and most people don't think of the gentle flicker of the LED as carrying actual information that could be intercepted.
Like this classic. Was just as much fun to reread as it was the first time. :)
http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:YdHPMAbPMeAJ:www.applied-math.org/optical_tempest.pdf+black+tape+over+modem+lights+tempest&hl=en&client=firefox http://www.applied-math.org/optical_tempest.pdf
-- GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too?