Tempest Info

[SpyKing <spyking@mne.net>]

RISE of the TEMPEST
by Sarah Ellerman
Reprinted from Internet UnderGround Magazine
June 1996 Edition Pg. 42 thru 46

The unmarked government van slows and stops. The agent inside puts down his
coffee and starts in on the day's work: monitoring John Doe's computer, 10
blocks away. John is busy working on his Mac with the curtains pulled
against the morning sunlight. The agent watches with great interest as John
reads through the cryptography and privacy newsgroups, then downloads some
fiction from alt.sex.stories. Everything that flashes by on John's monitor
is videotaped for later review: the balance and payees of John's checking
account, some decrypted e-mail that John assumed was private and an illegal
copy of Adobe Photoshop. 

Is this scenario making you take stock of what appears on your computer
screen? We all indulge in vices large and small, mentally shrugging, "Who
will ever know?" In everyday life, we usually manage to keep our
transgressions secret, but when it comes to information flitting across our
computer screens, the answer is that there are no secrets, thanks to a
relatively new, obscure form of surveillance that's a threat to your privacy
and your civil rights. It's so secret that the Feds refuse to even release
its real name. Privacy advocates have filled the void by nicknaming this
technology "TEMPEST," which stands for "Transient Electromagnetic Pulse
Emanation Surveillance Technology." What it does is allow a simple scanning
device to read the output from your monitor from up to one kilometer away.
No one ever need enter your house to plant a bug or copy your floppies; it's
non invasive and virtually undetectable. You won't even know what hit you
until your name gets put on a list of troublemakers or the marshals come
busting down your door.

Here's how it works: There is an electron gun in the back of your monitor
which repeatedly fires electrons at your screen, causing different pixels to
illuminate and form the text or graphics that you see. The gun sweeps
rapidly up and down, sending an electromagnetic signal which constantly
refreshes the information displayed on the screen. This signal doesn't stop
at the perimeter of your computer; it continues expanding outwards, seeping
through the ether much like a radio wave. Exposed cables act as inadvertent
antennas, trans mitting the contents of your screen across your
neighborhood. Information even travels back along modem lines and power
cords, back into the walls and out into the world. These signals can be
easily reconstructed. What's more, a spy can differentiate between many
different units operating in the same room. The signals don't conflict or
jam each other as one might suspect. Even identical units send out distinct
signals because of slight differ ences in the manufacturing of various
components. You may not think it, but your PC is hardly a  self-contained
unit storing information privy to you alone. In fact, you're better off
thinking of it as a small-scale broadcast station operating out of your house.
                               
You may think, "So what if someone can see a screen?" Consider the test
conducted by security professionals for the Technical Assistance Group at
http://www. thecodex.com who actually jury-rigged their own Tempest scanning
device and took it for a test drive in downtown Manhattan this spring. As
described in an essay by CEO Frank Jones, their "DataScan" device (four
years in the making) enabled them to "view CRT screens at ATM machines,
banks, the local state lottery machine in a neighborhood candy store, a
doctor's office, the local high school, the fire department, the local
police department doing a DMV license plate check, a branch office of a
securities trader making a stock trade and the local gas station (owner)
tallying up his day's receipts...The U.S. Customs building (in NYC) leaks
information as well as the Federal Reserve. Wall Street itself was a wealth
of information for anyone interested. The World Trade Center was fertile. It
afforded open parking areas nearby with millions of glass windows to snoop.
We headed east toward the New York Post newspaper offices and read the
latest news off their monitors (which was printed the next day). We headed
north toward City Hall and NYPD Police Headquarters. Guess what? They're not
Tempest-certified either...Neither is the United Nations, any of the midtown
banks, Con Edison (the power company), New York Telephone on 42nd Street or
Trump Tower!"
   
Although this kind of eavesdropping has been featured in the media, most
people are unaware of the ease with which spies can virtually look over
their shoulder. Most react with incredulity swelling into anger and fear
when the technology is demonstrated to them. However, specialists agree that
the average person should not be unduly concerned with being spied on. "No,
by and large it's not used to crack down on the common criminal," says Winn
Schwartau, author of Information Warfare and Security Insider Report.
"You've got to look at the expense that goes into one of these things, the
eavesdropping vans and equipment. It's not cheap stuff to do at the very
highest levels. As a number of prosecutors have told me, 'I wish so many
people wouldn't be so paranoid. They don't know we don't have the time or
the budget to waste on them.' I wouldn't worry for the individual reader;
I'd worry for the corporation that has something of value."
   
Mike, an electronic surveillance specialist (who requested that we not print
his last name) and proprietor of the Chicago-area Discreet Electronics and
Security, Inc. at http://www.w2. com/docs2/z/spyshop. html, also warns the
public to keep things in perspective. "Let's say you are invaded, and
there's an outrage at the invasion. It may be that your federal rights were
violated... but so what?" he says. "One variable in how to assess
countermeasures and detec tion devices is to figure out how much damage
could happen to you as a result of your privacy being invaded." What could
someone find out from your screen that would be of enough value or interest
for them to go to the trouble and expense of getting a crack at your
intellectual property? Pure curiosity? Unlikely. A nasty divorce or child
custody case? The pur suit of a suspected hacker? A suspicion that you stole
company secrets? Maybe.
   
"If, on the other hand, you're involved in something that's rather
political, if you're suing an insurance company for a $500,000 worker's
compensation claim, boy, there's a lot involved here," Mike says. "And
they're going to do whatever they have to, believe it or not, to get their
information."

GOOD NEWS BAD NEW

Paranoid or protective U.S. citizens and companies can purchase snoop-proof"
Tempest-certified" computers for their own use. However, the high cost of
such a secure system may be prohibitive to consumers, says Jules Rutstein,
program manager for Secure Systems at Wang Federal, Inc. Even after paying
through the nose, information on how the computer was modified to meet the
undisclosed emissions standards is top-secret. Wang, found at
http://www.wangfed.com, a leading supplier of computers to the government,
offers an affordable alternative to Tempest products, called ZONE. Rutstein
explains, "The ZONE alternative is a lighter version of the full Tempest
program. The ZONE program is actually an endorsed program under NSA (the
National Security Agency.)" The cost of ZONE protection is significantly
less than Tempest-certified units, but Rutstein wouldn't provide IU with
definitive figures. "We try to price our ZONE products at what we consider
commercial prices. [I'm] ambivalent because it's so difficult to pin down
prices on PC products today...We've been selling it from the position that
you can purchase a ZONE product for virtually the same price as a normal
system. It's not costing you any more." IU pressed to find the exact
difference between the products, but emission levels are top secret
information, and ZONE can only be measured as relative to Tempest. It is
probably safe to say that ZONE products would be acceptable for the average
consumer's privacy needs, which is good news for those concerned enough with
security to purchase a new computer. The bad news is that you don't have the
highest level of security.
   
Information about exactly how the process works is veiled. Seminars on
building Tempest-certified equipment are only available to persons with
certain security clearances, and rumor has it that people attempting to talk
about Tempest are often silenced with the excuse that they're creating a
security threat. Rutstein says, "Tempest is a munitions controlled item,
which means that the export of the product is controlled. . . Currently the
only [foreign entities] we sell to are NATO governments." These prohibitions
protect the U.S. from acts of terrorism, but the secrecy surrounding Tempest
specifications creates a dilemma for citizens. The government's reticence
about standards prevents us from properly shielding the normal computers we
already own. We can guess what kind of emissions they're giving off and try
to suppress them, but without cold hard data, we can never rcally be sure.
Most people don't even know of the existence of the technology, much less
the exact shielding specifications. "It is not possible for the average
person to go to a database and find out what is Tempest certified and what
is not. I believe that perhaps that's the way the government wants it," says
Jones of the Technical Assistance Group.

Jones feels that citizens should be able to test emanations on their own. He
points out that "there are several ways of blocking unintended
transmissions, but how effective are they? The people who manufacture
shielding always say, 'it's great, it's effective,' but you don't really
know. But now there is a way to test it. We built a room and we used woven
shielding with the DataScan device and it did block emissions, but it didn't
block them to their specs. We had to use close to twice what they thought
was secure to actually make the room secure." Mike of Discreet Electronics
and Security, Inc. also comes out in favor of defensive countermeasures,
saying, "Used in the application of creating awareness, to show how
vulnerable let's say, a bank could be, it actually serves a very high and
valuable purpose. The idea here is to create an awareness, because most
people don't know, and what's frightening is that they don't know that they
don't know."

YEAH, BUT IS IT LEGAL?
   
Jones says it's somewhat unclear whether citizens can lawfully monitor
electromagnetic emanations. Depending on how one interprets the 1986
Electronic Communications and Privacy Act, it seems it could be legal.
According to Jones, the 1986 measure covers, in depth, that "it is illegal
to own, possess or use any device whose primary purpose is the surreptitious
interception of ora/ or data communications." How does this apply to Tempest
scanning devices? Well, that depends on how you define the word "data. "
  
Tempest works by picking up computer emanations that happen to seep into the
ether, remember? Those electrons were not created to transfer information to
another party; rather, they were created for putting images on a computer
screen, many theorize. "The emanations are not communications, it's not
'data' by the definition of the word," Jones says. "They are spurious
emissions that are nothing but white noise. It's garbage."
    
So what about the Act's clause that forbids the "interception of intended
communications?" That's where things get complicated, Schwartau admits.
    
"The key word there is 'intended,' that's exactly correct," Schwartau says.
"I've posed this question of Tempest interception to lawyers and judges. The
operational phrase came out of some of the cellular interception, the mobile
home phone interception: Those are intentional broadcasts, and interception
of those is clearly illegal." Schwartau says that legal colleagues agree
with Jones' assertion that intercepting unintentional, surreptitious
emanations from electronic equipment is not illegal. "However, there have
been other lawyers who've maintained--and these operate on the government
side--that "we'd find a way to get you."    

In the end, no matter how brilliant an argument lawyers can make that such
transmissions "don't count," there's only one interpretation that really
matters: namely, the definition decided on by the government. "That is the
end-all and be-all," says Mike of Discreet Electronics and Security, Inc.
"If the government says it's illegal, then guess what? It's illegal."
   
So although the consensus may be that current law leaves a convenient
loophole that technically permits Tempest monitoring, the prudent person
shouldn't risk it. "I can modify a black-and-white television set, with
seven cents in parts, to make it work. Does that make my TV illegal? No, of
course not," says Schwartau. "The equipment that the government uses to
monitor and test this type of equipment is open sale equipment. There are no
clearances required. "
   
Schwartau believes that even while providers' motivations in selling Tempest
scanning equipment may be questionable, it's clearly legal for them to sell
the stuff. Using it is another question. "lt's shaky ground if I'm going to
go out and intercept the signals surreptitiously, but you also have to ask
the question: How can you prosecute something that is passive and invisible?"
   
That's a good point and a chief concern for privacy advocates. This
monitoring is so non-invasive that most people will never even have a clue
that they were spied on. Many fear that the government will abuse their
privileged position as the keepers of Tempest standards and that the
situation could turn into an unconstitutional, one-sided information war. As
a consequence, there is a grass-roots movement of people learning to protect
themselves. In his article "Tempest in a Teapot" at
http:t/www.quadralay.com/ www/Crypt/Tempest/ tempest.html, Grady Ward notes
that concerned computer users can take a number of simple steps to reduce
compromising emanations.
   
Ward suggests keeping cables between components as short as possible, to
reduce the length of cable that acts as an antenna and to use only shielded
cable which is wrapped with metal to keep emissions within the sheath. He
recommends that users make sure that all computers and peripherals that they
use meet the Federal Communications Commission's Class B stan dard which
permits only one tenth the power of spurious emissions than the Class A
standard. Ward also instructs users to keep the cover on their computer, to
mount telephone-line filter products at the jack of the modem and to snap
metallic ferrite beads over all cables so that offending electromagnetic
emissions are used up in a heat sink instead of being released into the air.
   
Those who feel the need to protect truly valuable information can take
further steps by altering the rooms in which they work.
    
"You don't need the proverbial lead-lined room anymore," Jones says. "There
are composite non wovens that are similar to wallpaper that you can do a
room in: the walls, the ceiling, the floors. Paste the stuff on the walls
and then put paneling or regular wallpaper over it, and it pretty much makes
the room secure. It blocks the electromagnetic emissions from going out.
There also is translucent shielding similar to the sun tinting in an
automobile that you put on the windows."
   
Schwartau offers an alternative, saying, "The least expensive and easiest
way to do it is electromagnetic moire' pattern masking. That' a technique
using an inline box that plugs between the monitor and the video card on
your PC. It creates an electromagnetic moire pattern that for all intents
and purposes would keep out everybody but the absolutely most dedicated
national resources."
   
What's more, the active-matrix screens now built into laptops operate with
out electron guns and their emissions are much lower. When such screens are
commonly used as desktop monitors the possibility for being spied on will be
lessened.
   
Active matrix ? Electromagnetic moire? Isn't all this a little extreme ?
Maybe not. Privacy advocates note that Tempest monitoring is just one facet
of an information war in which the government has an unfair upper hand. We
probably don't need to remind you, but the U.S. government has not always
demonstrated the best judgment when it comes to emerging technologies,
individual rights or covert actions involving "dangerous"citizens.

The hope is that public indignation about Tempest monitoring will cause a
true tempest, a whirlwind of anger and official accountability. Only then
will we have the same tools and information as the Feds, bringing the battle
onto an even playing field.
   
Perhaps strife, outcry and controversy during this period of rapidly
emerging technology would not be such a bad thing. Consider these words from
Shakespeare's Orthello: "If after every tempest come such calms, may the
winds blow till they have waken'd death!"

You may view Jones' paper " Nowhere to Run...Nowhere to Hide...The
vulnerability of CRT's, CPU's and peripherals to TEMPEST monitoring" at:
http://www.thecodex.com/c_tempest.html

You may view Jones' DataScan TEMPEST monitoring device at:
http://www.thecodex.com/datscan.html



 

 


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