9 ms·
Van Eck Phreaking
- q_andrew 6y agoI remember when a character started rambling paragraphs about Van Eck Phreaking in Cryptonomicon, it was immediately obvious that this would become a plot device later in the book.
- cl0ne 6y agoYes, I first learned about this from Cryptonomicon. Apparently it wasn't performed using LCD screens until 5 years after the book was published.
- q_andrew 6y agoSay what you want about Stephenson's writing, but he definitely has a knack for understanding concepts before they enter the public consciousness.
- davidw 6y agoIs that still true? Honest question. Cryptonomicon did such a wonderful job of capturing a certain something from the 1990ies. I haven't enjoyed his more recent books as much. Seveneves was depressing. Dodge had really bad reviews and I haven't bothered with it.
- q_andrew 6y agoSnow Crash is parody literature, but the fantasy is built around very good predictions about the future. He coined the word "avatar" for virtual characters, and the book contains a direct inspiration for google maps.
- SllX 6y agoEarth, initially. Keyhole cited Snow Crash as direct inspiration for their EarthViewer application, what became Google Earth post-acquisition.
- kragen 6y agoNo, Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar coined the word "avatar" for virtual characters in 01986, and Snow Crash wasn't published until 01992: http://habitatchronicles.com/2008/08/on-language-avatar-nytimes-com/ http://habitatchronicles.com/2008/08/on-language-avatar-nyti...
- amyjess 6y agoI was always under the assumption that they independently coined the word. At the very least, "avatar" wasn't well-known until Snow Crash came out, so it's possible Stephenson didn't know it was an existing word and came up with it for the same reasons as Farmer and Morningstar. It's also a near-certainty that the wider tech community only adopted the word "avatar" after reading it in Snow Crash due to the book's popularity, so even if he didn't independently co-coin the word, he's still the one who popularized it. (if you're familiar at all with TVTropes, the latter is the difference between the concept of a Trope Maker and a Trope Codifier)
- kragen 6y ago> I was always under the assumption that they independently coined the word. I guess it's possible? I certainly hadn't heard of Habitat in 01992, or indeed until after I met Chip, and the correspondence with the Hindu concept is quite arresting. But then again, I never had a Commodore 64, and Neal Stephenson always loves to be plugged into everything that's trendy. Farmer and Morningstar gave a paper http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html at The First International Conference on Cyberspace in 01990, which seems like the kind of thing you would maybe go to if you were writing a novel like Snow Crash in 01990. But they say Habitat (or rather Club Caribe) only had 15000 users at the time. > (if you're familiar at all with TVTropes, I love TVTropes! If we're talking about the cyberspace avatar trope rather than the use of the word "avatar" for it, you could maybe trace that back to Vinge's 01981 True Names, as mentioned in the talk I linked above.
- 2sk21 6y agoI just loved Anathem, Reamde and Fall.
- davidw 6y agoI liked Anathem and Reamde. DODO was ok, although it leaves you hanging a bit and apparently the sequel is even worse from that point of view, from the reviews.
- ravi-delia 6y agoI enjoyed Reamde a lot, some twists of fate left me cackling with delight. However, it felt much more meandering than other Stephenson novels. Is Fall better in that respect?
- ben_w 6y agoI really enjoyed Snow Crash; I felt that Seveneves was two completely different books that were coincidentally in the same universe, nether of which felt bad in isolation, but they definitely didn’t feel unified. I wasn’t a fan of Quicksilver, but as that was the first historical novel I’ve listened to, and as it was award winning, I assume it must be more about my tastes than the quality of the writing?
- davidw 6y agoI liked the second part of Seveneves, but the first bit felt really depressing, and more than a bit unrealistic. I liked Quicksilver, but could easily see how it's not everyone's cup of tea.
- ravi-delia 6y agoWhat about the first bit seemed unrealistic? I mean, besides the hand of God smacking the moon into bits. I loved the commitment to rock hard scifi, and the slow decay of relations on board resonated.
- davidw 6y agoThe fact that they could eke out an existence in such a challenging environment after so much went wrong just seemed a bit far-fetched.
- ravi-delia 6y agoYou know what, now that I think about it you're probably right. I think that the story just played into my feeling of a small team being able to carefully navigate where a large group takes on a mind of its own, and usually for ill. That's true in my experience for some things, but in space? With no backup? Probably doesn't carry over.
- robbiep 6y agoApologies for breaking seveneves for you: Why do they need to generate artificial Y chromosomes when there is a whole bunch of perfectly good ones in the last man alive who just died with them; and thousands upon thousands in the scattered genetic material in the frozen tin cans floating about in various orbits between earth and the shattered moon? And why does that have to lead to essentially speciation of the survivors?
- TheAdamAndChe 6y agoSeveneves was spectacular, by far one of my all-time favorite books. To each their own, I suppose.
- ravi-delia 6y agoSeveneves is absolutely depressing, and so stressful! I loved it, but the agonizing sense of balancing on a wire doesn't end until they finally lock in on the peach pit. I can definitely see how it could cross the line from tense to unreadable, especially considering how jarring the third part is.
- the__alchemist 6y agoMy favorites are The Diamond Age and Anathem, but thoroughly enjoyed Seveneves and Dodge. I almost dropped Dodge 1/4 of the way in due to it being to dull. I thought Stephenson had lost his edge. Stuck through it, and loved it! It tackles a collection of related issues that are relevant today, and I think will continue to become more so in the near future, especially for the HN crowd. Ie his concepts of a post-truth-future, cultures emerging and isolating using controlled access to information etc. Speculative neuroscience too, ie how the brain constructs a cohesive model of the world. Dodge seems to be the most polarizing Stephenson book.
- progre 6y ago"Seveneves was depressing" - there's an understatement. Quite interesting sci-fi in it I thought, but did anyone really think a story about the end of the world would be a fun read? Dodge in hell was more micro level depressing, he starts of by killing one of the main characters from a previous book after all. But I found it enjoyable over all. I think he managed to convey what he wanted with the book, and unlike Seveneves it was a quite fun read.
- kedean 6y agoPOSSIBLE VAGUE SPOILER I don't recall it actually being a plot device though. It effectively just served to drive Waterhouse's panic that someone was watching him, but then it sort of fizzles out. Unless I missed some implied detail, nobody actually ever used it to spy on him.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kelnos 6y agoANOTHER POSSIBLE VAGUE SPOILER IIRC the protagonists actually do use Van Eck phreaking later in the novel to read out what's on their adversary's laptop screen from the next hotel room over.
- mszcz 6y agoSPOILERS IIRC it's not an adversary but their fiend with whom they have a bet about whether Van Eck Phreaking works or not ;) Also, Van Eck Phreaking's use by their adversaries is implied when Randy's in jail and working on his laptop decrypting the coordinates of the gold stash, again IIRC.
- divbzero 6y agoSPOILERS Yes, Randy avoids reading out the coordinates by monitor to keep them safe from Van Eck phreaking.
- Grieving 6y agoThis video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ5HS8GWIec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ5HS8GWIec) linked at the bottom of the page shows the attack in action.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tyingq 6y agoIf you want to try it yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlVM9xqGKx8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlVM9xqGKx8 Plays Für Elise on a radio placed close to your monitor while you play that video full screen.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y agoI always thought it requires a CRT screen, but I got a surprisingly clear signal from my LCD screen. Why does this work? Where does the recoverable signal leak? I would expect a modern LCD to be full of digital signals sent in unpredictable, manufacturer-specific ways, and certainly not sequentially enough to leak as recognizable audio.
- tyingq 6y agoMy guess is that it's leaking in multiple places. Since it's relatively crude by alternating "all black" and "all white" pixels at different "switch rates", it generates recognizable noise in multiple places. That seems to match all the different frequencies you see people reporting to find it. And people finding it regardless of how the signal is getting to the monitor, LVDS, HDMI, VGA, etc. The "requires a CRT screen" was, I think, referencing the much more fine grained ability to actually recreate what was displayed on a screen. Though that's been replicated for LCDs now also.
- amelius 6y agoIsn't EMC testing supposed to uncover this kind of flaw, and what does the FCC say about equipment which leaks like this?
- tyingq 6y agoThey do, but it would fall under "unintentional radiators", and the measurements are made at some distance from the device. Something like this language: Except for Class A digital devices, the field strength of radiated emissions from unintentional radiators at a distance of 3 meters shall not exceed the following values: Frequency of emission(MHz) Field strength (microvolts/meter) 30-88 100 88-216 150 216-960 200 Above 960 500
- tibbon 6y agoWhy are there so few demonstration videos to be found of this? The one tyingq listed is one of the few concrete ones I've ever found. I remember reading about it in the 90's, but never being able to find it actually working.
- tetsuhamu 6y agofrom 2 years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpNP9b3aIfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpNP9b3aIfY
- gnfargbl 6y agoDon't miss https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename), which is at least as interesting.
- mhh__ 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_RAFTER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_RAFTER another sneaky one (highly recommend the book spycatcher, really unique perspective in that the author was a proper engineer on the frontline in the cold war)
- tetsuhamu 6y agoTEMPEST is available now, for free, on github. All you need is a $20 RTL-SDR. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjqpKtGNbQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjqpKtGNbQo https://github.com/martinmarinov/TempestSDR https://github.com/martinmarinov/TempestSDR
- Forbo 6y agoDidn't know the barrier to entry had fallen so low. Last I saw it was only under very specific conditions with lots of expensive equipment that this stuff could be recovered.
- Grieving 6y agoI wonder how in-scope this would be for bug bounty programs. Getting a dev's-eye view into an application would be invaluable for determining attack vectors, and there's also snooping kanban boards for low-priority bugs and slack for lazy cred sharing. If I didn't live out in the sticks (and had done research to make sure it would be legal) I'd give it a go.
- h2odragon 6y ago"Everything that oscillates, transmits"
- motohagiography 6y agoWhen this was all still secret, I was at a conference in a conversation with some emanations security people and they were remarking on the internal case of a new Mac server at the time that had round perforations in it, likely to make the aluminum frame cheaper in raw materials, but they were noting how this would impede some of the interception capabilities.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- consp 6y agoThis reminds me of reports in the early 2000's of collecting data from ethernet port leds if they were badly designed.
- jkbbwr 6y agoReminds me of my favourite book series, the laundry files. One of the more scary characters refuses to own a computer. Because Van Eck Phreaking.