@ RobHib -- Boot Note -- Re: Agreed -- @ Paul Crawford [Two weeks on]
BOOT NOTE -- TWO WEEKS ON
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Just read an article in New Scientist, 21 June 2014, No. 2974, p20 about this matter titled: Opening a can of bugs -- NSA spy gadgets built using info leaked by Edward Snowden.
It says radio hackers have reversed engineered NSA gadgets on info supplied by Snowden (based on the NSA's Advanced Network Technology). Article is brief and non-technical and refers to software-defined radio (RF generated presumably developing Fourier/DSP transients etc. (equiv filters) to generate RF frequencies without coils and inductors. Can be mounted in USB etc.
There's essentially two types: sniffers that collect the 'coherent' noise from keyboards, video cables etc. and ones that inject signals.
The vagueness and non-technical nature of the article doesn't help. But on the info supplied, this tech doesn't seem to violate RF engineering: RF leakage from non-message-producing devices (in the RF sense as opposed to leakage from a computer (which is 'partially coherent')).
Essentially, the key issues remain the same, there's RF sniffers that detect switching 'noise' and send it off for further processing and systems that generate RF which can be implanted thus allow info to escape by RF. The 'breakthrough'--if you can call it that--is the SDR, software defined radio, which allows transmissions on a very large band of frequencies (not being limited by tuned oscillators etc.) [heaven help the harmonics/interference to other RF devices!]
The SDR in this schema is somewhat functionally equivalent to the hypothetical DC-to-Daylight transmitter that I proposed in my earlier post. Basically, SDR allows any old TX frequency to be dialled up in software (over a large but not definitively announced band of frequencies). It states that these frequencies can cover AM, FM, GSM and Bluetooth, which implies a range from about 0.5MHZ to 2GHz or more, which is very wide (as it covers all wireless technology old and new, domestic and industrial/commercial, and perhaps up to the 5GHz band or even higher. (Very handy, I'd like several to distribute FM/AM/TV broadcasts to small portable devices around my house, methinks.)
In summary, watch out for spider like things attached to or hanging off your keyboard and video cables with 2cm of wire (antenna) attached; araldite your PC closed and bootstrap it with anti-tamper seals; and don't let USB devices, stray monitors, keyboards etc. that don't have a proper security 'lineage' (guaranteed free from tampering) anywhere near your PC.
Nothing much has changed, but the ante has been considerably upped (and it'll be surprisingly sophisticated in its delivery and miniaturised packing and such), as the money thrown at it by the NSA et al will essentially be limitless.
The good news is that the article also points out that hackers are working all-out to reverse engineer this stuff and to provide suitable antidotes.