People get details wrong all the time in eyewitness reports.
The people who fly on BOS-LAX in first class tend to be "important". Similarly the NYC-LAX and NYC-LON flights. DCA even more so. I mean, we saw a very high level Samsung exec as one of the first to post photos in the flight which crashed at SFO recently; not unusual at all.
The quality of intelligence you could get by monitoring first class is why Air France (well, French intelligence) actually installed microphones in the headrests of some of their fleet. Probably wouldn't do this for Orlando to Nashville flights in coach.
"Every computer emits a frequency that can be picked up by our equipment and that allows us to read it by locking on to it manually," a senior executive of the firm told the Independent.
"It's a bit hit and miss at the moment, but it can be done and the technology is improving all the time."
I assume they were referring to TEMPEST. Basically every piece of electronic equipment has unintentional radiation. It's super-easy to read keyboard input even from a wired keyboard, or to read from a screen (CRT or LCD) based on the pattern, with about $50k (in 1999) of RF equipment -- could do it in the hundreds or thousands now.
Reading from a CPU is harder, but it can be done, especially if you only need to recover one thing (like a key), can force the processor to load the key on demand (like, sending a packet which needs to be decrypted), can record a lot of samples, and know the structure of the software and equipment which is processing it (like if it is a standard phone). Cryptography Research (Paul Kocher, aka one of the smartest people in security who doesn't work at NSA) and his team have done this for years -- live demo of the attack in ~10 minutes at various conferences.
Industrial espionage and political spying (domestically) are what bother me the most. I actually don't mind gov/mil vs. gov/mil spying (except to the extent it is a waste of resources which should be spent on more productive things, like environmental remediation, tech development, education, debt, etc.) -- it's gov vs. people which is the problem.
Comments
People get details wrong all the time in eyewitness reports.
The people who fly on BOS-LAX in first class tend to be "important". Similarly the NYC-LAX and NYC-LON flights. DCA even more so. I mean, we saw a very high level Samsung exec as one of the first to post photos in the flight which crashed at SFO recently; not unusual at all.
The quality of intelligence you could get by monitoring first class is why Air France (well, French intelligence) actually installed microphones in the headrests of some of their fleet. Probably wouldn't do this for Orlando to Nashville flights in coach.
Really? The bug first class cabins?
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the-spy-who-loved-me...
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=860&dat=19950320&id=7V...
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/archive/t-647100.html
"Every computer emits a frequency that can be picked up by our equipment and that allows us to read it by locking on to it manually," a senior executive of the firm told the Independent.
"It's a bit hit and miss at the moment, but it can be done and the technology is improving all the time."
What???
I assume they were referring to TEMPEST. Basically every piece of electronic equipment has unintentional radiation. It's super-easy to read keyboard input even from a wired keyboard, or to read from a screen (CRT or LCD) based on the pattern, with about $50k (in 1999) of RF equipment -- could do it in the hundreds or thousands now.
Reading from a CPU is harder, but it can be done, especially if you only need to recover one thing (like a key), can force the processor to load the key on demand (like, sending a packet which needs to be decrypted), can record a lot of samples, and know the structure of the software and equipment which is processing it (like if it is a standard phone). Cryptography Research (Paul Kocher, aka one of the smartest people in security who doesn't work at NSA) and his team have done this for years -- live demo of the attack in ~10 minutes at various conferences.
yes: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//...
Search for 'Air France'. There's a whole list of industrial espionage incidents there, given as evidence to the European parliament.
Industrial espionage and political spying (domestically) are what bother me the most. I actually don't mind gov/mil vs. gov/mil spying (except to the extent it is a waste of resources which should be spent on more productive things, like environmental remediation, tech development, education, debt, etc.) -- it's gov vs. people which is the problem.