Protecting Data at Risk of Unintentional Electromagnetic Emanation: TEMPEST Profiling

Abstract

Unintentional electromagnetic (EM) emissions often include information about the data processed by electronic devices. Intrusion based on an unintentional EM emission leaves no evidence of an attacker’s activity, while the data owner is unaware that it has been lost. EM attacks can be performed without physically damaging a device that operates regularly. The most typical intrusion activities involve sensitive data exfiltration using various methods that do not require the physical connection of devices to the computer network or communication channels. This research examines EM emissions from computer monitors, wireless keyboards and mice, printers, scanners, conductors, piezoelectric sensors (PES), and radio frequency identification (RFID) devices. The telecommunication electronics material protected from emanating spurious transmissions (TEMPEST) profiling as a performance engineering of the EM footprint is discussed. This study also presents different TEMPEST standards and highlights their importance concerning unintentional EM radiation.