Ahh..technology..Noise from computer chips could reveal the computer code!
London / May 12, 2004 5:21:23 PM IST
According to a new study, the noise emitted by computer chips could make it possible for code breakers to decipher encrypted messages.
The researchers, Adi Shamir and Eran Tromer of the Weizmann Institute in Israel, sampled the high-frequency audio produced by computer central processing units (CPU) in a recording studio. They found that they could distinguish between different cryptographic keys being processed by the chip, according to the frequency of the sound emitted.
According to New. Scientist, it was also found that the length of a string of characters could be determined by measuring the duration of certain sounds because these correspond to the amount of time taken to process the key.
These details could, in theory, make it substantially simpler for an assailant to break the code used to protect valuable data on a computer
"Our preliminary analysis of acoustic emanations from personal computers shows them to be a surprisingly rich source of information on CPU activity," the researchers wrote in their study.
"This looks like a very exciting finding," said Dr Markus Kuhn, at Cambridge University in the UK. "It's another indication that there are many types of compromising emanations still waiting to be discovered."
Computer scientists have already demonstrated a variety of different ways of using inadvertent emanations to eavesdrop on computers. It is well known that the electromagnetic emanations from a monitor can be used to reconstruct information displayed on the screen. It is for this reason that some banks install computers within "Faraday cages", which block out electromagnetic signals.
