CDR: BSA deploys imaginary pirate software detector vans
At 08:09 AM 11/9/00 -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
Visitors to Glasgow Central Station yesterday were surprised to be confronted by a Ford Transit van with a small radar and rusty Sky satellite dish mounted on top. What was this apparition? Why, the BSA's latest weapon in the war against software-stealing scum.
Some gedankenartists should gather a few dishes on vans and drive around the MS campus, for yucks... What are the laws about libraries lending bits? Music CDs are common. Can you have a lending library of software?
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. I wonder how the Supreme is going to rule on that case where the police used an infrared camera to determine they had probable cause to go after a marijuana grower based on the heat radiating from his house ? 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: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com> To: <cryptography@c2.net>; <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net> Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2000 7:05 AM Subject: CDR: BSA deploys imaginary pirate software detector vans
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Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2000 10:13:26 +0000 To: usual@espace.net From: Fearghas McKay <fm@st-kilda.org> Subject: BSA deploys imaginary pirate software detector vans Reply-To: "Usual People List" <usual@espace.net> Sender: <usual@espace.net> List-Subscribe: <mailto:usual-on@espace.net>
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/14562.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ BSA deploys imaginary pirate software detector vans By: Kieren McCarthy Posted: 08/11/2000 at 10:57 GMT
The Business Software Alliance aka The Pirate Busters is growing so frustrated in its hopeless efforts to cut down on software piracy that it has decided propaganda and misinformation is the way forward.
Visitors to Glasgow Central Station yesterday were surprised to be confronted by a Ford Transit van with a small radar and rusty Sky satellite dish mounted on top. What was this apparition? Why, the BSA's latest weapon in the war against software-stealing scum.
A wise reader asked one of the "consultants" what exactly the dishes were able to do and was informed they could detect PCs running illegal software. When pushed a little further, she admitted the van was "just a dummy" but the BSA still had a fleet of the real things rushing around Scotland detecting and nabbing unsuspecting criminals.
Expressing incredulity, things turned nasty and our loyal reader was threatened. He'd "better watch out" because the BSA with its new super software-finding equipment will "get him easily". He quickly ran off and slid into the shadows before he was photographed and his face wired to Interpol and the CIA.
Can you believe this? This has to be one of the most insane things we've heard in years. The BSA needs to take a valium and lay down for a bit. ®
Related Stories BSA offers £10K bounty to catch software thieves
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-- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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
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.
(Large number of groups/lists he/she crossposted to have been removed.) At 2:32 PM -0800 11/13/00, 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?
Yes, you are being totally naive. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)
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" <tib@tigerknight.org> To: "Ian BROWN" <I.Brown@cs.ucl.ac.uk> Cc: "Neil Johnson" <njohnson@interl.net>; "cypherpunks" <cypherpunks@EINSTEIN.ssz.com>; "cryptography" <cryptography@c2.net>; "cypherpunks" <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net>; <ross.anderson@cl.cam.ac.uk> 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 08:13 PM 11/13/00 -0500, 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.
Get an AM radio. Write a program to paint and clear the CRT at two different, rates and alternate between them. Now locate the alternating tones on your radio.
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
I forgot to add that the rumor was that Micro$oft was looking into ways to add software to their applications to manipulate the generation of these RF emissions so they could broadcast the application's serial number. They could then drive a "sniffer" truck around and look for duplicate serial numbers in order to find illegal copies of their software being used. As stated by others, this was just a rumor. Neil M. Johnson njohnson@interl.net http://www.interl.net/~njohnson PGP Key Finger Print: 93C0 793F B66E A0C7 CEEA 3E92 6B99 2DCC
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
participants (10)
-
Ben Laurie -
David Honig -
Ian BROWN -
Marcel Popescu -
Neil Johnson -
R. A. Hettinga -
Steve Schear -
Tib -
Tim May -
Tom Vogt