tempest back doors

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 07:46 PM 12/9/04 -0500, Steve Thompson wrote:
> --- "Major Variola (ret)" <mv at cdc.gov> wrote:
>> >Perhaps I am stupid.  I don't know how one would go about modifying
>> >application software to include a 'back door' that would presumably
>> >enhance its suceptibility to TEMPEST attacks.  Isn't tempest all
about
>> EM
>> >spectrum signal detection and capture?
>>
>> You have your code drive a bus with signal.  The bus radiates, you
>> 'TEMPEST' the signal, game over.  Back in the 60s folks programmed
>> PDPs to play music on AM radios.  Same thing.  Dig?
>
>Fine.  That's great as an example of transmitting data over a covert
>channel, but so what?  As you suggest, people have been doing that with
AM
>radios since the 60's, although the folklore mentions the phenomenon in

>the context of monitoring the computer's heartbeat, purely as a
debugging
>technique.

The poster didn't understand how to backdoor a program using
unintentional RF as the channel.  I told them.  That's "so what"