Red Rock Eater Digest - Hidden Data Transmission Using Electromagnetic Emanationswriting

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| | | | --- | --- | | Red Rock Eater Digest | Most Recent Article: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 |

``` [Your computer produces electromagnetic "emanations" that in some cases contain enough information to reconstruct, for example, the image on the screen. These emanations can sometimes be detected at a distance, even across the street, and this fact has given rise both to legitimate computer security research and to urban myths. One of the urban myths, which takes various forms, is that Microsoft has secretly used emanations from personal computers to look for pirated software. I've enclosed a message about this myth from probably the foremost authority on the subject. The message is forward by permission and slightly reformatted.]

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Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 12:54:48 +0000 From: Markus Kuhn Subject: Re: BSA deploys imaginary pirate software detector vans

> From: "Neil Johnson" > > 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 entire story is complete nonsense (and I am the closest person on this planet to the source of this rumour).

There was a slightly misleading article in

Scientific American, issue 12/1998, http://www.sciam.com/1998/1298issue/1298techbus4.html

on this issue that was presented on

http://slashdot.org/articles/98/11/16/0028250.shtml

in a completely wrong and misleading way. The original idea of using broadcast serial numbers in electromagnetic emanations appeared in

Markus G. Kuhn, Ross J. Anderson: Soft Tempest: Hidden Data Transmission Using Electromagnetic Emanations, in David Aucsmith (Ed.): Information Hiding, Second International Workshop, IH'98, Portland, Oregon, USA, April 15-17, 1998, Proceedings, LNCS 1525, Springer-Verlag, ISBN 3-540-65386-4, pp. 124-142.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ih98-tempest.pdf

as well as in patent application GB9722799.5. This was based on (early ongoing) research done by myself and Ross Anderson and was not funded by anyone. Microsoft never had anything to do with it.

We showed early results among others to Microsoft Research, and they decided that they were not interested in pursuing it any further, mostly because of the "big brother" aspect of the entire idea. As far as I know, Microsoft has not done or funded any research on compromising emanations.

If someone is really using today serial numbers embedded in compromising emanations of PCs to track software pirates, then I would most definitely like to know about it. Not only out of academic curiosity, but also to talk about patent license issues ...

Markus