[SunRescue] WTF is this?

[Chris Petersen]

> 
> In a message dated 3/9/2000 7:25:38 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
> martin at dsres.com writes:
> 
> > 
> >  Tempest is a system for shielding equipment to prevent anyone
> >  eavesdropping by monitoring the EMI that it puts out. I think
> >  it was some sort of military system, but there may have been
> >  commercial variants.
> >  
> Tempest is the military program to protect vital military equipment from the 
> Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) that a nuclear bomb blast puts out. These units 
> are supposed to survive a close nuclear explosion. This assumes the 
> electricity stays on.
> 
> Paxton

Hrmm, that's not exactly it.  The first gentleman had the right definition,
although it's plausible that Tempest as a program my have had something to
do with EMP scenarios as well.  Tempest is the military designation for a
set of technologies dealing with the prevention of the interception of EMI
emissions which could then be used to reconstruct data or eavesdrop, first 
clearly defined in the public arena by Wim van Eck (hence you will often 
here the term "Van Eck interception" or "Van Eck radiation" or etc. in 
conjunction with this concept).  Winn Schwartau wrote about this in his book
"Information Warfare" and I believe has even demonstrated equipment for this
type of eavesdropping in use at different hacker or security conferences.

Here's an excellent site on Tempest that I *just* found when I went to brush
myself back up on Tempest, I'm sure there's others out there, but this one
has a good set of resources and links:

The Complete, Unofficial TEMPEST Information Page
http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/tempest.html


Hmm, after brushing up on all this, maybe I will go get that stack of
SS2s... :)

Chris

-- 
Chris Petersen
Systems Engineer
Unigraphics Solutions Inc.		Industry Services, Mid-America Region
Email: havoc at apk.net (Personal)       petersen at ugsolutions.com (Professional)