At 06:43 AM 03/27/2000 -0500, John Young wrote:
>Last summer World Net Daily published an article on
>a hacker group called "Hong Kong Blondes" in which
>the hackers claimed that compromising electromagnetic
>emanations from computer equipment could be acquired
>up by cellular modems.
World Net Daily tends to have articles from the
black-helicopter crazy fringe; don't expect hard scientific facts
or technical accuracy that can be used without independent verification.
Also, because of their reputation, they're a good group for
3L33T Haqxors to social-engineer (D00Dz - We got our b0guz story
in the WORLD NEWS! Kewl!)
The article sounds like the HKBs planted physical equipment
in the offices they were bugging - cellular modems could
work fine for this, if they have a way to avoid the phone bills,
e.g. use stolen cellphones. Using their own cellphones
would lead to easy traceability if the transmitters were detected.
Using cellular modems for TEMPEST monitoring sounds highly dubious.
The technology usually described as "cellular modems"
doesn't include the radio - it's just modems designed to handle
cellphone limitations on bandwidth, transmission quality, and dropouts,
e.g. 4800 or 9600 baud with extra error correction,
which interfaces to a cellphone. There's also CDPD,
which uses the cellular bands more actively, but that
doesn't give you the flexibility to monitor arbitrary stuff.
>
>Can cellular modems be used for this purpose? If so,
>what is involved in setting them up for it?
>Here's the article excerpt:
> As time progressed, members of the Hong
> Kong Blondes leadership told WorldNetDaily
> they began actually to install codes within the
> PLA computer mainframes. By using cellular
> modems, they were able to monitor the
> electromagnetic signals emitted by PLA
> computers by remote means. The Blondes even
> planted transmitters within the offices of the
> Chinese government, People's Liberation Army
> and foreign corporate headquarters in order to
> monitor their activities and infiltrate their
> computer networks.
Thanks!
Bill
Bill Stewart, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
