TEMPEST is the idea that someone could receive all of the EMI emitted by
your computer hardware, analyze it and reassemble it into meaningful
data without ever having physical or cable access to your equipment. I
have seen some of the PC's used by the military that were TEMPEST
certified. My brother dealt in military scrap by buying millions of
pounds of scrap. Very fascinating stuff. The PC's were in metal cases
with so many screws it took a half hour to open it. They also had metal
shields around all of the connectors. The cases were also
compartmentalized. The floppy drive was in a sealed section by itself
with just a few holes for cables to go to the controller.
Personally, I don't believe that someone could do this. It would require
so much storage space and processing power that doesn't exist yet. If we
had that much processing power, DES would be useless.

John Zoltak
North American Mfg Co

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nancy F. Lloyd [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 1998 7:15 PM
> To:   John Zoltak
> Subject:      Re: NO data recovery
>
> What is the Tempest scenario?
> Nancy ;->
>
> John Zoltak wrote:
>
> > If you're really that paranoid about your data, where a simple
> reformat
> > is not good enough for you, then the Tempest scenario must be a real
> > worry for you!
> >
> > John Zoltak
> > North American Mfg Co
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Jeff Woods [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> > > Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 1998 9:11 AM
> > > To:   [log in to unmask]
> > > Subject:      Re: [HP3000-L] NO data recovery
> > >
> > > At 05:19 PM 8-25-98 -0400, Nancy F. Lloyd wrote:
> > > >                                                   .... does
> anyone
> > > have
> > > >suggestions about how we can insure that none of our data can be
> > > >recovered from the drives of these machines once we ship them?
> > >
> > > Well, it's not Friday (the traditional humor day here on the
> hp3000-l
> > > range) but I remember reading during Desert Storm that US
> personnel
> > > were
> > > equipped with laptop computers for certain missions.  Of course,
> the
> > > applications and data on them were considered secret. In the event
> of
> > > danger that one might fall into enemy hands, the unit responsible
> was
> > > to
> > > fire a minimum of something like five rounds into the unit, no
> less
> > > than
> > > three of which were supposed to go into the hard drive.  I guess
> > > that's the
> > > mil-spec solution.  :)
> > >
> > > For a practical solution, it seems to me that it might be straight
> > > forward
> > > to connect the drives up to a PC or Macintosh with external SCSI
> and
> > > partition and high-level format the drives for that environment.
> Once
> > > that's done, it will be quite a lot of work to get anything
> meaningful
> > > from
> > > the drives.  It's said that the old data can still be read with
> > > sufficient
> > > effort.  (The NSA is rumored to have at least the powers of a
> minor
> > > deity
> > > in the sneakier parts of the digital world after all. ;)  But any
> old
> > > company won't make hide nor hair of them once you've written a
> > > significant
> > > amount of data on them, especially if they don't get a whole
> volume
> > > set.
> > > So any technique that overwrites a substantial portion of the
> drive
> > > will
> > > probably do.
> > >
> > > The more sensitive your data and the more paranoid you want to be
> > > about it,
> > > the more effort it may be worth to you.  But the odds are pretty
> long
> > > that
> > > it will ever be a problem.
> > > --
> > > Jeff Woods
> > > [log in to unmask] [PGP key available here via finger]
>
>