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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:16:01 ADT
jcaldwel@iquest.net
Tue, 17 Mar 1998 22:41:27 +0000
* Original: FROM: BILL SMITH, Fidonet
EID:F58A FC6C6460
Electronic Telegraph Thursday 12 March 1998
Issue 1021
Detector van to nab software
pirates
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
DETECTOR vans capable of hunting down individuals who have not paid
their computer software licence fees could result from a
development reported today.
Cambridge University computer scientists have found a way to vary
the electromagnetic radiation emitted by a screen so that it can
broadcast a secret licence number up to 120ft away. Software
designed in this way would enable manufacturers to identify
packages being used by people other than the licence holder.
Today's issue of New Scientist reports that Markus Kuhn and Dr Ross
Anderson have developed software for the new generation of computer
screens that can be used either "offensively", to help detect
software pirates, or "defensively", to make it much more difficult
to read a screen from afar.
Dr Anderson said he got the idea from a schoolboy prank in 1971, at
the Glasgow Schools' computer centre, when one of his colleagues
found he could modify the radio frequency emissions sent out by the
computer so that it played a tune to anyone using a medium wave
radio in the neighbourhood.
In the offensive mode, the Cambridge technology enables a software
company to vary the way information is projected on screen to
conceal a hidden message, so that a detector van with a decoder can
check to whom the software is licensed.
One company, Microsoft has been approached with the idea. However,
it turned down the opportunity to use the software because of the
public relations implications, said the Cambridge team.
In the defensive mode, the image processing method can alter the
way information is presented on the screen so that it can be easily
read, but the electromagnetic signals are difficult to decipher
from afar.
The software varies the way letters are written in the horizontal
stripes of colour used to build up a screen image. "These letters
radiate about a hundredth of the electromagnetic emissions," said
Dr Anderson. "You can make it very much more difficult for a bad
man to pick up and understand stray radio frequency emissions that
come out of your computer."
"You can even arrange it so you see one thing on your screen while
a man sitting in a grey van in your car park sees something else."
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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:16:01 ADT