I have started a same thread in Dreamviews (http://www.dreamviews.com/forum/index.php) also. But I havent got satisafactory comments or replies. So I thought it will be a nice idea to share it with you.

Dont think that I am trying to say that " I am great " . But it is a tricky way to discuss a more controversial topic.

Ok...

Prying eyes on your PC secrets !

http://img455.imageshack.us/img455/1436/newindian2sp.jpg

This was the front page of "The New Indian Express", Friday 30 December 2005, a leading newspaper of India. The headline was about the terrorist attack in Bangalore, the intellect city of India. But look at the bottom news. Its a dream come true for me.

Cclick on the image to get the news zoomed in :

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/5497/afinalunni9ac.jpg (http://img455.imageshack.us/img455/1381/afinal8uk.jpg)

And the page 5:

http://img489.imageshack.us/img489/9696/bfinal4ta.jpg (http://img393.imageshack.us/img393/7083/b28ck.jpg)

When we completed the project we went to different news reporters to publish it. They said NO. They havent understood what it was. Then we stopped going behind them. After that they started coming behind us. What a contradiction ?

Now in the front page of a national daily !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Doing a reality check.....

The story of our project is a long one. I can tell it if you are interested. It starts with the program "Tempest for Eliza (http://erikyyy.de/tempest/)". Tempest for Eliza is a Program that uses your computer monitor to send out AM radio signals. You can then hear computer generated music in your radio.

Those who want to know more on the subject Tempest and Van eck phreaking, use the following links

The Complete, Unofficial TEMPEST Information Page (http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/tempest.html)
Van Eck Phreaking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_Phreaking)
TEMPEST (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEMPEST)

Now I am ready to discuss about something that I really know. This is a rarely discussed thread. If it is discussed then it consist of so many myths and wrong data as I have found in the internet.

Computers aren't the only thing that need protecting though, I am very positive that such eave's dropping "Phreaking" methods can be used through "Cybernetics". Unfortunately walking around with a Tin foil hat isn't very trendy and it doesn't fix the problem with International Espionage Syndicates.

It's all very well to build walls to hide behind however it's better still to confront the problems openly and objectively so that world legislation can be written on such Espionage's use.

[Yes it's a bit further than just blocking someone from Fishing your Wireless LAN for a misconfiguration.]

Wow, so YOU were part of the team? I read about this on Slashdot, very impressive.

*Xerxes goes off to try Eliza*

Interesting. I'll have to fool around with this later.

- N

We are thinking to make the hardware opensource. If any one of you want to have more information on our project, feel free to contact me..

We are thinking to make the hardware opensource. If any one of you want to have more information on our project, feel free to contact me..

I've got one question. I understand the basis principles behind it and see how it could work for a fairly isolated system, say a computer in someone's home. But do you manage to selectivly look at individual machines in something like an office building where there might be dozens of them?

I've got one question. I understand the basis principles behind it and see how it could work for a fairly isolated system, say a computer in someone's home. But do you manage to selectivly look at individual machines in something like an office building where there might be dozens of them?

We have tried it.

We have a tuner block in our circuit for exactly this purpose. The frequency of radiation depends upon the resolution and refresh rate of the display system . So we will tune the circuit according to the required frequency. So different displays will be got as in the case of a simple channel tuning. You will need a good wideband antenna. We used a log periodic antenna in the 100-1000MHz range.

Now the next problem is that two or more monitors similar in all aspects are used. ie., same manufacturer for all hardware equipments of PC and same refresh rate and resolution for the monitor. Then theoretically all these PCs will have same frequency of radiation.

But here we can use the property "directivity" of the antenna. The antenna can be directed towards the target system only. So the antenna should be a highly directive one also. But this is not satisfactory. Since all these systems are close their radiations will get interfered with each other. But we had no problem when doing in similar conditions. Why ?

We think because the clock signal generator crystal in the PC are temperature dependent. So no two systems can have exactly same values for its H-sync V-sync and Pixel Clock. Since the wave we are capturing will lose its synchronization on its way, we have to supply H-sync and V-sync externally. The values for these are altered to get only one display stable the interfering display will get roll off.