TEMPEST AND ECHELON BY – Y.SRUTHI

 TEMPEST and ECHELON are the method of spying in a sophisticated manner.  Both technologies are a part of secret project developed by National Security Agency (NSA),US.  Intended to keep track of spies and terrorists activities for preserving the security of the American country.  But now used for political spying and industrial espionage (espionage refers to the organized theft of information).

1) Tempest is the technology, which can reproduce what you are seeing in your monitor, what you are typing in your keyboard. 2) Echelon is the spying on a large network by sniffing through the words. TWO POWERFUL INTELLIGENCE GATHERING TOOLS

 To spy on people  Tracing their messages  To find out the terrorist activities across the globe  Developing a powerful method of interception PURPOSE

SCOPE Tempest, this intelligence tool can sniff through the pc, keywords, cash registers and automatic teller machines from as far as a half mile away using the emission of electro- magnetic waves. Echelon is developed with the highest computing power of computers connected through the satellites all over the world. It can intercept as many as 2 million communications per hour, through phone calls,faxes,e- mails,downloads,microwave,cellular etc.

A.The extremely high volume of traffic makes exhaustive, detailed monitoring of all communications impossible in practice. B.The final analysis of intercepted communications imposes further restrictions. C.Very small proportion of those communications are transmitted by satellite. LIMITATIONS

TEMPEST Stands for Transient Electromagnetic Pulse Emanation Standard. It is based on the study of CE(compromising emanations). Networking is not needed to hack into victims computer as it uses a concept of EM radiations. Electro-magnetic radiations of specific keys are obtained from respective electrical devices. Using these specific keys of radiations data can be intercepted at remote stations. EM radiation from the victim’s monitor, keyboard, even pc memory and hard disk can be traced.

Reading a computer monitor remotely using TEMPEST

 A monitor emitting EM radiation Collecting the signal <-

TEMPEST ATTACKS AND PROTECTION  Two types of attacks-: 1.Short wave attacks 2.Broad band transmission attacks  Three types by which tempest attacks can be protected- : 1.Tempest testing & selection of appropriate devices 2.Tempest Fonts 3.Tempest Proof Walls

 The biggest secret spy project.  Contains a vast network of electronic spy stations located around the world and maintained by five countries: the US, England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.  These countries are in a secret agreement called UKUSA.  Spy on each other’s citizens by intercepting of almost every telephone call, fax transmission and message transmitted around the world daily.  Sniffing of messages can be through both wired and wireless networks.  Developed with the highest computing power connected through the satellites all over the world.  Super computers look for certain keywords called the ECHELON “dictionaries.”

ECHELON Keywords and Dictionary  “Sensitive Words” used to find out the messages which carries the sensitive information are known as the Keywords.  The huge database containing keywords is called as the Dictionaries.  Only those messages that produce keyword “hits” are tagged for future analysis.  A Dictionary Manager from each of the respective agencies is responsible for adding, deleting or changing the keyword search criteria for their dictionaries at each of the stations.

 messages from the Internet  from undersea cables  from radio transmissions  from secret equipment installed inside embassies  using orbiting satellites to monitor signals anywhere on the earth’s surface Echelon Spying Methods

Echelon communications receiving stations over the world

CONCLUSION   Tempest is the technology for spying from electronic equipments with out any physical contact.  Echelon is the vast network formed by NSA and its allies all over the world to intercept the messages sent through any transmission media.  Nothing can be hidden from the these systems.  Unfortunately our India does not have these technologies developed yet.