victim said:
this is the first time i send a message on this news group, buy the way i'd
like to know :
if it's possible to remote controlling XP, buy sending intentional EMI using
computer comunication protocol.
Well, I think there are several issues here. It depends whether
you're talking about someone *controlling* a PC running XP by sending
EMI to it, or whether you're talking about information leakage from
your XP system by having it generate EMI which could be interpreted
elsewhere.
To the first - somebody controlling your PC with intentional EMI - I
believe that this is *extremely* unlikely (to the point of being
near-impossible) in the general case of a standard PC with
known-to-be-good software running on it. PC's are not designed as
radio receivers, they aren't designed to be sensitive to external RF,
they generate a large amount of RF noise within themselves as a
side-effect of their digital circuitry.
In most countries PCs are required to be shielded and filtered to
prevent their internal RF noise from getting out of the case in
sufficient strength to interfere with other devices, and this same
shielding and filtering makes it difficult for external RF to get
into the case.
A very strong external RF field could, quite possibly, get into the PC
well enough to disrupt its operation by "brute force". Any such
effect would almost certainly be random, chaotic, and unpredictable...
and hence it would tend to show up as software errors or system
crashes. I wouldn't personally cosider this to be "remote
controlling" of the system, any more than I'd say that one would be
"remote controlling" someone driving a car by throwing a brick through
the windshield and causing a crash
As you apparently know, it's possible for a PC's own "side effect"
radio emissions to be detected, and in some cases interpreted by an
external listener - e.g. reconstructing the image displayed on the
screen. This doesn't allow the external listener to control the PC,
just to monitor its activity. There's no good cure for this other
than improved RF shielding and filtering of the PC.
There are, I'm afraid, a lot of ways in which a PC's security can be
compromised, allowing the PC to be controlled remotely over the
Internet and its content to be spied upon. This doesn't involve radio
(or, at most, only incidentally, if you happen to be using a wireless
network connection rather than a wired Ethernet). It involves
"spyware", "trojanware" (viruses or worms, which install themselves in
your OS or applications and then contact a remote site and allow the
remote site to control your PC, snoop on your keystrokes, scan your
registry for passwords, etc.).
Such infections by spyware and trojans is very, *very* common
these days. A high percentage of in-the-home personal computers on
broadband (cable and DSL) networks are infected in this way. I've
heard reports of PCs which were found to be infected with many
*hundreds* of different viruses, spyware modules, and other bits of
malware. Such infections can slow down or disrupt the operation of XP
so badly that the system becomes unusable.
The problem on many networks is so bad that if you take a new PC, put
a right-out-of-the-box Windows XP installation on it, power it up,
hook it to your network, and immediately run Windows Update to
download the Microsoft security updates to XP... you're probably too
late. By the time you finish downloading the security updates,
there's a good chance that at least one piece of malicious software on
another system on the Internet has scanned your machine, found a
security vulnerability, and has infected your machine. You're
"owned", and it's possible in principle for the attacker to monitor
every keystroke you enter, from there on out.
I've been damaged 2 hard disk from radio amateur on the zone, but i don't
know how to localize it 8(
If your systems have been physically damaged by strong RF fields, the
best remedy is to improve your filtering and shielding. Add clamp-on
ferrite "cores" to every wire going into or out of the PC case (power,
keyboard, mouse, Ethernet, monitor). Buy and use a good RF/EMI
plug-in filter for your AC mains power.
To be honest, though, I'd look to other causes to explain the damage
to your hard drives.
and not mentioning the annoing problem about evedropping from crt
emi....i've read something on internet about emi+crt and "intentional emi"
and i found that very useful, but i'd like to know the opinion of the people
that count on this matter, because this is a very privacy problem for me and
I don't see anybody doing something about designing new component less emi,
or jammer to protect from sendin emi.
I truly don't think you have to worry about somebody controlling your
PC via EMI signals. It's technically extremely difficult to do (to
the point of it being implausible in practice).
The same is true, to a lesser extent with regards to privacy (picking
up RF leakage from your PC and spying on you with it). It's certainly
possible but it think it's unlikely.
For another thing, there are *far* greater risks to your PC's
integrity and privacy than RF. Viruses, spyware, trojan-horse
software, and the like are *very* common, and are a very real hazard
to the typical PC user these days. That's where all of the attention
is going, because these are much larger risks to your privacy than EMI
detection by a nearby listener. You don't spend a lot of time
worrying about hangnails and blisters, when your arm is on fire
If you don't already have a good, modern, up-to-date virus scanner and
malware/spyware detector, get one right away... or unplug your PC and
leave it powered off until you do.
