"The movements of a hard drive's components, keystrokes on a keyboard, even the electric charge in a semiconductor's wires produce radio waves, sound, and vibrations that transmit in all directions and can-when picked up by someone with sufficiently sensitive equipment and enough spycraft to decipher those signals-reveal your private data and activities."
"This category of spying techniques, originally codenamed TEMPEST by the National Security Agency but now encompassed in the more general term "side-channel attacks," has been a known problem in computer security for close to eight decades, and it's one that the United States government carefully considers in securing its own classified information."
"In the letter, Wyden and Brown write that these forms of spying "do not just pose a counterintelligence threat to the US government, but these methods can also be exploited by adversaries against the American public, including to steal strategically important technologies from US companies.""
Computers leak sensitive information through physical emanations including radio waves, sound, and vibrations produced by hard drive movements, keyboard keystrokes, and electrical charges in semiconductors. These side-channel attacks, originally identified by the NSA under the codename TEMPEST nearly eight decades ago, remain a significant security concern. US lawmakers Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Shontel Brown launched an investigation through the Government Accountability Office to assess how vulnerable modern computers, phones, and devices are to such surveillance techniques. The investigation examines whether the US government should mandate device manufacturers implement stronger protections against these attacks, which threaten both government classified information and American companies' strategic technologies.
#tempest-attacks #side-channel-attacks #computer-security #government-oversight #physical-emanations-surveillance
Read at WIRED
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