[H-GEN] Hmmmm - who's paranoid? ;)

Jason Parker ph330812 at student.uq.edu.au
Mon Feb 16 19:55:09 EST 1998


On Mon, 16 Feb 1998, A Bruce in the Land of the Bruces wrote:

> Vans run by anti-piracy groups could pull up outside a company's
> office and count the number of software signals emanating from it.
> If, say, 50 beacons for a particular title were detected but the
> company had licensed only two copies of the software, that could
> become evidence on which a court would issue a search warrant.

Of course, considering that this is precisely the technology that
TEMPEST[1] is designed to protect against, everyone's favourite
capitalist imperial nation (read:  USA) would, of course, be
immune.[2]

The paranoid may wish to consult the Safe Book (from ora) for
details, and I cite same as references.  The *extremely* paranoid may
wish to get hold of The Orange Book[4], but that's probably going too
far.  :)

Jason
ph330812 at student.uq.edu.au

[1] : a technology so secret, you don't even get told what it stands
      for[3] unless you sign a bit of paper saying you'll sell them
      products or manpower for the project...

[2] : well, government offices that required TEMPEST solutions to
      security anyway.  Still probably not your local CES.

[3] : or even that it stands for anything.  The best guess is that
      it's software and hardware solutions to scramble the radio
      transmissions that are emitted from keyboards, VDU's, printers,
      and even RAM?!

[4] : *THE* reference for computer security.  Defines the famous
      C3, C2, C1 security levels that NT weenies are so fond of
      touting.  For reference, some unixes, with work, manage a C3
      rating, if memory serves.  The ratings go all the way to A1,
      where it takes more time to document the code, than to write
      it.

-----
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