Those who wander into the realms of
spying,
phreaking, and dubious eavesdropping are likely familiar with Wim Van Eck, but for those new to remote screen-grabbing scene, you should probably take note. Back in the day, Mr. Eck "proved it was possible to tune into the radio emissions produced by electromagnetic coils in a CRT display and then
reconstruct the image," effectively rending the images on a distant monitor without the user knowing. Now, however, a modern day guru in his own right has found that the methodology used in
1985 can still be potent today, albeit on laptops and flat panel LCDs. Markus Kuhn has since discovered that by tuning into the radio emissions produced by the cables running into a monitor, hackers can garner the pixels one at a time, and carefully stack them together to form a picture of someone else's screen. Reportedly, Markus was able to "see a PowerPoint presentation from a stand 25 meters away (pictured)," and he also noted that laptops with metal hinges were particularly good targets as they tended to broadcast the necessary signals quite well. Of course, we aren't encouraging the act of on-screen voyeurism without appropriate consent, but if you're interested in seeing what's behind the (faraway) LCD, be sure to hit the read link and push aside those morals for a moment. [Warning: PDF read link]
[Via
Slashdot]
posted Apr 21st 2007 3:39PM
Neil Stephenson strikes again! (LCD Van Eck phreaking in Cryptonomicon)
My thoughts precisely
Greatest book of all time if you ask me!
Anybody seen any data havens about?
Having read Cryptonomicon, Havenco (http://www.havenco.com comes) comes to mind as a data haven which is on (or in) a platform in the North Sea (http://www.sealandgov.org/history.html).
If that's a real Power Point screen, whoever wrote it is illiterate. In fact it's incoherent.
What part of "PowerPoint" did you not understand?
I wonder how the MPAA will react to this as the screen is essentially "rebroadcasting" the signal.
Everyone who has ever watched a movie is technically guilty of unauthorized retransmission of copyrighted work.
Looks like this only works with VGA cables which are also falling out of common use.