On 9/10/2012 3:37 PM, MFPA wrote: > What about TEMPEST as a potential eavesdropping vector?
First, it's "Van Eck phreaking." TEMPEST refers to a NATO standard for *defending* against Van Eck phreaking. Second, no, of course the distro-on-a-stick doesn't defend against Van Eck phreaking. The only defenses against Van Eck phreaking involve the laws of physics, not mathematics. Working inside a Faraday cage may (may!) give some benefit. Not quite sure, myself.[*] [*] Although a Faraday cage blocks signals from coming *in*, the jury's out on whether it blocks signals from *leaving*. As an example, imagine you have a Faraday cage that's hooked up to electrical ground. You step into the cage while carrying a balloon that you've rubbed on your head a few times. You're locked in the cage. To signal your conspirator that you want out, you touch your balloon to the cage. The conspirator sees a couple of picocoulombs of charge stream to ground, and unlocks the cage. From inside a Faraday cage you've just electrically signaled someone outside the cage, thus demonstrating Faraday cages are *not* an absolute bar against electrical signaling from the inside going out. Whether this thought experiment is applicable to Van Eck is a different matter, of course... but the naive "you can't get any electrical signal out of a Faraday cage" view appears to be wrong, as a matter of physics. _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
