On Fri, 10 Nov 2000, Ian BROWN wrote:

...

Wasn't there some articles some time ago about Microsoft doing research into Tempest/Van Eck (sp) radiation ? It was speculated at the time that they were going include software to "broadcast" their serial numbers so that illegal copies could be detected.

This was a suggestion by Markus Kuhn and Ross Anderson (at Cambridge University). The paper is at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ih98-tempest.pdf

"Our suggestion is that software packages include in their screen layout a few lines with a signal that encodes the license serial number plus a random value . . . a "software detector van" can be used to patrol business districts and other areas where software piracy is suspected. If the van receives twenty signals from the same copy of a software from a company that has only licensed five copies, then probable cause for a search warrant has been established." p.13

Hope I'm not being totally naive about the capability of computer hardware, but I sure don't recall my PC (or any that I have ever had or can think of seeing) having short range broadcasting capabilities. How would this be theorheticly possible (despite the utter nonsense that the rumor must be) to accomplish, if at all? <EOL> Tib

Tib wrote:

Hope I'm not being totally naive about the capability of computer hardware, but I sure don't recall my PC (or any that I have ever had or can think of seeing) having short range broadcasting capabilities. How would this be theorheticly possible (despite the utter nonsense that the rumor must be) to accomplish, if at all?

tempest. your monitor *is* a short range broadcasting device.

On Fri, 10 Nov 2000, Ian BROWN wrote:

...

...

Wasn't there some articles some time ago about Microsoft doing research into Tempest/Van Eck (sp) radiation ? It was speculated at the time that

...

...

were going include software to "broadcast" their serial numbers so that illegal copies could be detected.

This was a suggestion by Markus Kuhn and Ross Anderson (at Cambridge University). The paper is at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ih98-tempest.pdf

"Our suggestion is that software packages include in their screen layout a few lines with a signal that encodes the license serial number plus a random value . . . a "software detector van" can be used to patrol business districts and other areas where software piracy is suspected. If the van receives twenty signals from the same copy of a software from a company that has only

The general idea is to pick up and decode the RF emissions generated by the CPU, Memory, I/O and Video systems to figure out what the computer is doing. It takes some work (not as much as you would think), but there have been documented demonstrations where the video signals from a PC were picked up and reproduced on another monitor several hundred feet away. TEMPEST is the "code" name for the U.S. Governments standards for shielding computer equipment used for classified work inorder to prevent such eavesdropping. The technique is often referred to as "Van Eck Phreaking" (sic). Neil M. Johnson njohnson@interl.net http://www.interl.net/~njohnson PGP Key Finger Print: 93C0 793F B66E A0C7 CEEA 3E92 6B99 2DCC ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tib" To: "Ian BROWN" Cc: "Neil Johnson" ; "cypherpunks" ; "cryptography" ; "cypherpunks" ; Sent: Monday, November 13, 2000 4:32 PM Subject: Re: BSA deploys imaginary pirate software detector vans they licensed

...

five copies, then probable cause for a search warrant has been established." p.13

Hope I'm not being totally naive about the capability of computer hardware, but I sure don't recall my PC (or any that I have ever had or can think of seeing) having short range broadcasting capabilities. How would this be theorheticly possible (despite the utter nonsense that the rumor must be) to accomplish, if at all?

<EOL> Tib

At 07:12 PM 11/13/00 -0600, Neil Johnson wrote:

The general idea is to pick up and decode the RF emissions generated by the CPU, Memory, I/O and Video systems to figure out what the computer is doing.

It takes some work (not as much as you would think), but there have been documented demonstrations where the video signals from a PC were picked up and reproduced on another monitor several hundred feet away.

TEMPEST is the "code" name for the U.S. Governments standards for shielding computer equipment used for classified work inorder to prevent such eavesdropping.

The technique is often referred to as "Van Eck Phreaking" (sic).

As I recall one suggested method in the paper involved some cleaver manipulation of pixel intensities and/or location to create the equivalent of a high process gain spread spectrum signal. Brilliant concept. steve

Neil Johnson wrote:

Wasn't there some articles some time ago about Microsoft doing research into Tempest/Van Eck (sp) radiation ? It was speculated at the time that they were going include software to "broadcast" their serial numbers so that illegal copies could be detected.

That was a thing Ross Anderson did for Microsoft, IIRC. Cheers, Ben. -- http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html "There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Robert Woodruff