Re: Don't trust the net too much

| > hundered dollars worth of transmitter parts, you can cause transient
| > failures with EMF pulse weapons, and for a bit more, you can fry all
| > the electronics, then drive away before they have any idea that their

| worth of parts.  Could you be more specific?

| > 	Go read Winn Schwartaus book "Information Warfare"  Then go
| > read Sun Tzu.
| 
| I have.  I agree, killing people is dumb, but try telling that to your 

	More specifically, few items sensitive electronic items are
hardened against electromagnetic pulses.  Ever see a speaker interfere
with your TV set?  Build a big enough speaker, and you can screw with
your computers memory.  (Of course, if you just use an electromagnet,
and not bother to build a speaker around it, you'll be much more
energy efficient. :) A big enough pulse can confuse just about any
hardware; bigger pulses still can destroy it.  Directed (or
undirected) pulses are easy to produce with the right amps.

	Again, check out Schwartau; your local library probably has
him.

Adam


-- 
"It is seldom that liberty          I Support The Phil
of any kind is lost all at     Zimmermann legal defense fund
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for next chunk to export --> http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/export/

Adam Shostack writes:
> 	More specifically, few items sensitive electronic items are
> hardened against electromagnetic pulses.  Ever see a speaker interfere
> with your TV set?

Thats because electrons flying along long free paths in the vacuum of
your picture tube are easy to move off of path. However, I'll point
out that magnetic fields are always generated by dipoles and fall off
very fast with time. I'll also point out that you'd need a damn
powerful field to do the following:

> Build a big enough speaker, and you can screw with your computers
> memory.

I'd have to hear very, very powerful evidence that this was possible,
especially at a distance.

Perry

>
>Adam Shostack writes:
>> 	More specifically, few items sensitive electronic items are
>> hardened against electromagnetic pulses.  Ever see a speaker interfere
>> with your TV set?
>
>Thats because electrons flying along long free paths in the vacuum of
>your picture tube are easy to move off of path. However, I'll point
>out that magnetic fields are always generated by dipoles and fall off
>very fast with time. I'll also point out that you'd need a damn
>powerful field to do the following:
>
>> Build a big enough speaker, and you can screw with your computers
>> memory.
>
>I'd have to hear very, very powerful evidence that this was possible,
>especially at a distance.
>
>Perry
>
>
>

For people interested in electromagnetic fields, TEMPEST, emanations,
crashing computers, and electronics eavesdropping:

Go see Winn Schwartau talk about HERF guns sometime. He passed around
a picture of a device for < US$500 that could crash any computer within
50 yards..  Then again, it isn't too good for the person firing the gun
either.. (mega EM emissions).

The parts are available if you know what to get. a VERY enlightening
and frightening presentation. I don't think he personally has built one.
His presentation contained a presentation on TEMPEST emissions, and
low level EM field effects on sensitive equipment problems too (a PBS
documentary - a VERY compelling presentation of why you should never
use walkman/CD players/radios/electronics equipment on airplanes if
they say not to, and you value your life)

Obviously, the further you get away, the faster the field decays, so
range to target is important. Then again, the US purportedly used a kind 
of HERF bomb against Iraqi telecommunications bunkers during the Persian
Gulf war. (No I don't have any references about this, but it shouldn't
be that hard to verify).

--
____________________________________________________________________________
Doug Hughes					Engineering Network Services
System/Net Admin  				Auburn University
			doug@eng.auburn.edu
		"Real programmers use cat > file.as"

Doug Hughes writes:
> Go see Winn Schwartau talk about HERF guns sometime. He passed around
> a picture of a device for < US$500 that could crash any computer within
> 50 yards.

If it costs that little, I'd like to see one demonstrated. I've heard
of no demonstrations of such things.

.pm

Hmm.. I'm not sure I'd want to stand too close when one of those
things goes off, but it would be an interesting demo. :)

Maybe behind an EM shield.. ;) 
I think there was a question of some microelectronics being permenently
damaged because of fusion at the MOS level (burning through the gate), so
it might have to be a disposable machine in a place where no other machines
are near. It would depend on the magnitude of the charge (and hence cost
of the weapon). It might take a very expensive one to do this, or maybe
not...

--
____________________________________________________________________________
Doug Hughes					Engineering Network Services
System/Net Admin  				Auburn University
			doug@eng.auburn.edu
		"Real programmers use cat > file.as"

Doug Hughes writes:
> 
> Hmm.. I'm not sure I'd want to stand too close when one of those
> things goes off, but it would be an interesting demo. :)
> 
> Maybe behind an EM shield.. ;) 

What is it, exactly, that you imagine could happen to you? You realize
that you can expose humans to pretty powerful electromagnetic fields
without any noticable effect unless the frequency happens to be one
that their tissues absorb.

> I think there was a question of some microelectronics being permenently
> damaged because of fusion at the MOS level (burning through the
> gate),

To do that requires that you transfer energy from your device into the
computer you are attacking. How do you propose to do that?

.pm

>
>Doug Hughes writes:
>> 
>> Hmm.. I'm not sure I'd want to stand too close when one of those
>> things goes off, but it would be an interesting demo. :)
>> 
>> Maybe behind an EM shield.. ;) 
>
>What is it, exactly, that you imagine could happen to you? You realize
>that you can expose humans to pretty powerful electromagnetic fields
>without any noticable effect unless the frequency happens to be one
>that their tissues absorb.
>
I'm thinking better safe than sorry. None of the studies on EM fields
and their effects on humans are causal, but a lot of studies and advice
have concluded that caution and minimization may be advisable.
 It's the un-noticable effects that I'm worried about. ;)

>> I think there was a question of some microelectronics being permenently
>> damaged because of fusion at the MOS level (burning through the
>> gate),
>
>To do that requires that you transfer energy from your device into the
>computer you are attacking. How do you propose to do that?
>

Just relating what I thought I'd heard. It may be wrong, or I may be
remembering it wrong. My EM theory is a bit rusty.

--
____________________________________________________________________________
Doug Hughes					Engineering Network Services
System/Net Admin  				Auburn University
			doug@eng.auburn.edu
		"Real programmers use cat > file.as"

On Wed, 12 Jul 1995, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

> Doug Hughes writes:
> > I think there was a question of some microelectronics being permenently
> > damaged because of fusion at the MOS level (burning through the
> > gate),
> 
> To do that requires that you transfer energy from your device into the
> computer you are attacking. How do you propose to do that?

airburst? :)

Ben.

.pm tolled:
> Doug Hughes writes:
> > Go see Winn Schwartau talk about HERF guns sometime. He passed around
> > a picture of a device for < US$500 that could crash any computer within
> > 50 yards.
> 
> If it costs that little, I'd like to see one demonstrated. I've heard
> of no demonstrations of such things.
> 
> .pm
> 

Hey, if someone will point me at some (free) plans, I'll build one and 
hold a demonstration.

(I've got an old XT, a 286, a 3B1, and some monitors I'd like to blow up, 
and I've not yet blown up a pc using HERF yet (thermite--yes, HE--done 
it, lN2--yep, but not HREF.)

--doug
ayen@access.digex.net

On Wed, 12 Jul 1995, Doug Hughes wrote:

> Go see Winn Schwartau talk about HERF guns sometime. He passed around
> a picture of a device for < US$500 that could crash any computer within
> 50 yards..  Then again, it isn't too good for the person firing the gun
> either.. (mega EM emissions).

That all depends on the power level, and the emission pattern of the 
device, and the frequency.  I've been working within 10 feet of a dipole 
being fed by a 1kW amplifier before, and it didn't make me sterile (but 
it might've loosened a filling or two <grin>).

> The parts are available if you know what to get. a VERY enlightening
> and frightening presentation. I don't think he personally has built one.
> His presentation contained a presentation on TEMPEST emissions, and
> low level EM field effects on sensitive equipment problems too (a PBS
> documentary - a VERY compelling presentation of why you should never
> use walkman/CD players/radios/electronics equipment on airplanes if
> they say not to, and you value your life)

This sounds like absolute propoganda.  If you do the calculations, you'll 
see that a 1 watt transmitter sitting 100 feet away from your target will 
generate an EMF less than that 1000kW ERP TV transmitter array you just 
flew over.  If aircraft avionics were *that* sensitive, we'd have planes 
falling out of the sky, and we don't.  Add to that the HF and VHF 
transmitting equipment in the cockpit, plus the microwave ovens in the 
fore and aft, PLUS the phones they have on the plane, and it adds up to a 
sizeable amount of RF bouncing around the cabin without you and your 2m 
talkie with it's 6 dB loss rubber duckie.

Now, if every passenger fired up their 2m talkies, that might pose a 
problem, but then again every passenger wouldn't be using one, would they?

Again, sounds like "we want to totally control your environment for your 
safety (actually, to minimize our liability)" crap.
--
Ed Carp, N7EKG    			Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com
801/534-8857 voicemail			801/460-1883 digital pager
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Q.	What's the trouble with writing an MS-DOS program to emulate Clinton?
A.	Figuring out what to do with the other 639K of memory.

>On Wed, 12 Jul 1995, Doug Hughes wrote:
>
>> Go see Winn Schwartau talk about HERF guns sometime. He passed around
>> a picture of a device for < US$500 that could crash any computer within
>> 50 yards..  Then again, it isn't too good for the person firing the gun
>> either.. (mega EM emissions).
>
>That all depends on the power level, and the emission pattern of the 
>device, and the frequency.  I've been working within 10 feet of a dipole 
>being fed by a 1kW amplifier before, and it didn't make me sterile (but 
>it might've loosened a filling or two <grin>).
>
Agree!

>> The parts are available if you know what to get. a VERY enlightening
>> and frightening presentation. I don't think he personally has built one.
>> His presentation contained a presentation on TEMPEST emissions, and
>> low level EM field effects on sensitive equipment problems too (a PBS
>> documentary - a VERY compelling presentation of why you should never
>> use walkman/CD players/radios/electronics equipment on airplanes if
>> they say not to, and you value your life)
>
>This sounds like absolute propoganda.  If you do the calculations, you'll 
>see that a 1 watt transmitter sitting 100 feet away from your target will 
>generate an EMF less than that 1000kW ERP TV transmitter array you just 
>flew over.  If aircraft avionics were *that* sensitive, we'd have planes 
>falling out of the sky, and we don't.  Add to that the HF and VHF 
>transmitting equipment in the cockpit, plus the microwave ovens in the 
>fore and aft, PLUS the phones they have on the plane, and it adds up to a 
>sizeable amount of RF bouncing around the cabin without you and your 2m 
>talkie with it's 6 dB loss rubber duckie.
>
>Now, if every passenger fired up their 2m talkies, that might pose a 
>problem, but then again every passenger wouldn't be using one, would they?
>
>Again, sounds like "we want to totally control your environment for your 
>safety (actually, to minimize our liability)" crap.

If you saw that PBS documentary (they want $20,000 for rebroadcast by the 
way). It was an 87 or 88 or something like that. It would make you
a believer. There was a lady in a van that whenever she used her cellular
phone, her sun's breathing apparatus (lung impaired) went into alarm.
 There was another case at a hospital pre-natal care word near the main
entrance to the hospital. Several occasions when a local bus loop went
by, and the guy happened to be talking on the intercom of the bus, several
of the units in the ward went into alarm and failed (they had a tough time
tracking that one down by the way). 
 Wheel chairs for handicapped people were sensitive. They held a cellular
phone about a foot from a wheel chair control and it started spinning around
and generally going out of control. (The guy's wheel chair had gone out of
control and run him off a heavy slope once and he almost died. it was
unproven whether it was electromagnetic or just a defect).
 This just goes to show that we live in a world of electromagnetic soup.
We really don't know how it effects the body long term, or whether, having
more mission or life critical electronics could be interacting with over
devices. This was the theme of the program.
 Another example was on an airplane (several of them.. older ones mostly
I believe) pilots would occassionally lose instruments (VLS, etc) when
passengers would activate portable transistor radios and such. Particularly
radios.. But there was another case involving a portable computer.. These
cases have been documented. It's a good thing the plain wasn't on a 
landing approach during a storm, or things could've gone very bad very
quickly.
 I heard about the portable computer via a different source. The guy
kept turning his computer on. The instruments would do a little dance.
The captain would tell the stewardess, she would tell the passenger, he
would turn it off for a while. Then, he would turn it on and repeat..
Until finally he refused to turn it off, so they confiscated it and
returned it at the end of the trip. Urban Legend? maybe..

 Believe what you want, but investigate the reports before dissmissing it
out of hand as propaganda. I'd rather stay alive than rely on "theoretically
it shouldn't matter." :)

Keep in mind that newer planes (767, 757) let you do anything you want
while the plane is in flight (but now while landing or takeoff), so they
probably build better instrumentation and cabin shielding into the planes
these days. If they say keep it off, chances are they have a good reason..

If you find categorical evidence to the contrary, I'm sure I would be very
relieved to see it posted here. (rather than wondering if somebody
in one of the 30 rows ahead of me might decide he knows better)

Disclaimer: I have absolutely no idea what kind of shielding goes into
an airplane nor any knowledge of building practices in the airline industry,
but that should be obvious. ;)

Well, I've posted enough on this, and I don't have any evidence besides
what I've seen and what I've heard from others. For all I know the
entire documentary was botched (it was shown on an evening newsmagazine
in the late 80's hosted by Connie Chung - British documentary). Now back 
to your regularly scheduled mailing list already in progress.

--
____________________________________________________________________________
Doug Hughes					Engineering Network Services
System/Net Admin  				Auburn University
			doug@eng.auburn.edu
		"Real programmers use cat > file.as"

On Wed, 12 Jul 1995, Doug Hughes wrote:

>  This just goes to show that we live in a world of electromagnetic soup.
> We really don't know how it effects the body long term, or whether, having
> more mission or life critical electronics could be interacting with over
> devices. This was the theme of the program.

There have been many examples of this - several cases of hams having 
their pacemakers go nuts when they keyed their transmitters, etc.  But 
that doesn't mean that aviation avionics are sensitive - in fact, devices 
that are specifically designed to receive RF of a specific frequency are 
usually designed to reject RF of a different frequency, especially type 
accepted radios (the avionics package is required to be type accepted for 
that particular class of service, which includes spurious rejection, 
intermod products down XX dB, etc.)

>  Another example was on an airplane (several of them.. older ones mostly
> I believe) pilots would occassionally lose instruments (VLS, etc) when
> passengers would activate portable transistor radios and such. Particularly
> radios.. But there was another case involving a portable computer.. These
> cases have been documented. It's a good thing the plain wasn't on a 
> landing approach during a storm, or things could've gone very bad very
> quickly.

A transistor radio puts out such a minute amount of RF (at 455 KHz and/or
10.7 MHz, the IF freqs of the radio) that most insturments designed to
pick up RF can't detect this stuff from more than a few feet away.  FCC
regulations say that if your avionics is being interfered with, it's YOUR
problem, not the guy that just turned on his radio.  If someone's avionics
is being interfered when I turn on an AM/FM transistor radio, then I'd say
that he either needs to get his avionics fixed, or he's using illegal
consumer-grade radios (which are usually junk anyway - even much ham radio
gear is garbage, unfortunately), instead of the type-accepted stuff he's
supposed to be using.  I'd be interested in finding out more about this
guy and his "VLS-jumped-when-someone-turned-on-their-radio" story. 

>  I heard about the portable computer via a different source. The guy
> kept turning his computer on. The instruments would do a little dance.
> The captain would tell the stewardess, she would tell the passenger, he
> would turn it off for a while. Then, he would turn it on and repeat..
> Until finally he refused to turn it off, so they confiscated it and
> returned it at the end of the trip. Urban Legend? maybe..

The early laptop computers would put out an amazing amount of crap.  I 
used to have a Zenith laptop, and when I'd turn the thing on, it'd throw 
out junk that I could hear on every radio in the house, including the 2m 
FM stuff, the HF rig, and I could even hear it out in my car on the 2m 
mobile!  I can believe it, but that's no excuse for just saying, "well, 
let's just ban all of it..."

>  Believe what you want, but investigate the reports before dissmissing it
> out of hand as propaganda. I'd rather stay alive than rely on "theoretically
> it shouldn't matter." :)

My point is, it's not your, nor my responsibility to refrain from using 
our radios - it's the responsibility of the avionics people to make sure 
that their radios are within spec and are kept that way.  If they don't 
bother, that's not my fault.

> Keep in mind that newer planes (767, 757) let you do anything you want
> while the plane is in flight (but now while landing or takeoff), so they
> probably build better instrumentation and cabin shielding into the planes
> these days. If they say keep it off, chances are they have a good reason..

Again, my contention is that they don't.

> If you find categorical evidence to the contrary, I'm sure I would be very
> relieved to see it posted here. (rather than wondering if somebody
> in one of the 30 rows ahead of me might decide he knows better)

The ng rec.radio.amateur.misc might have some additional stuff in the FAQ,
and the ARRL certainly has a mountain of information on this - I'll poke
around.  'echo help|Mail info@arrl.org' might yield some interesting
things... 
--
Ed Carp, N7EKG    			Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com
801/534-8857 voicemail			801/460-1883 digital pager
Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key		an88744@anon.penet.fi

Q.	What's the trouble with writing an MS-DOS program to emulate Clinton?
A.	Figuring out what to do with the other 639K of memory.

Doug Hughes writes:
> If you saw that PBS documentary (they want $20,000 for rebroadcast by the 
> way). It was an 87 or 88 or something like that. It would make you
> a believer. There was a lady in a van that whenever she used her cellular
> phone, her sun's breathing apparatus (lung impaired) went into alarm.
>  There was another case at a hospital pre-natal care word near the main
> entrance to the hospital. Several occasions when a local bus loop went
> by, and the guy happened to be talking on the intercom of the bus, several
> of the units in the ward went into alarm and failed (they had a tough time
> tracking that one down by the way). 

There is a huge difference between noting that some electronic
equipment is temporarily vulnerable to interference, or that you can
read screens at a distance from the emitted radiation, and saying that
you can build these portable ray-guns that cause computers to fry at
200 yards.

.pm

On Wed, 12 Jul 1995, Doug Hughes wrote:
> Keep in mind that newer planes (767, 757) let you do anything you want
> while the plane is in flight (but now while landing or takeoff), so they
> probably build better instrumentation and cabin shielding into the planes
> these days. If they say keep it off, chances are they have a good reason..
> 
> If you find categorical evidence to the contrary, I'm sure I would be very
> relieved to see it posted here. (rather than wondering if somebody
> in one of the 30 rows ahead of me might decide he knows better)
> 
> Disclaimer: I have absolutely no idea what kind of shielding goes into
> an airplane nor any knowledge of building practices in the airline industry,
> but that should be obvious. ;)

In the Canadian CFS (Canada Flight Supplement), a manual distributed to 
all Canadian pilots and continuously updated, there is a section on this 
kind of thing.   The basic gist of it is that there is no proof that 
computers and cells cause interference, tests have proved inconclusive, 
but there is suspicion.  Then, of course, is a silly little form that you 
are supposed to fill out if you ever have such a problem.

As for cells, a collegue (with his Commercial rating, was going for an
Airline Transport Rating) swore up and down that cells do nothing, and
that the only reason there are phones on airplanes is because with a
standard cell you can phone just about anywhere locally because of the
range an air-ground connection would have a 30,000'.  The plane phones are
supposed to have some sort of device that uses the local cell and forces 
you to pay LD charges.  Whether it is true or not....

But anyway, aircraft instruments operate in just about all bandwiths (HF, 
VHF, UHF mainly, with VHF being very popular.)

Sean

o-------------------o----------------------o-----------------------o
|   Sean Walberg,   |    Tech Support      | Pas_al, _obol, BASI_, |
|  sean@escape.ca   | escape communication |   PostS_ript, T_L...  |
| Mail for PGP key  |      925-4290        | C fills all the holes |
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Ed Carp said:

> This sounds like absolute propoganda.  If you do the calculations, you'll 
> see that a 1 watt transmitter sitting 100 feet away from your target will 
> generate an EMF less than that 1000kW ERP TV transmitter array you just 
> flew over.  If aircraft avionics were *that* sensitive, we'd have planes 
> falling out of the sky, and we don't. 

Oh, yes-- we do. The Army lost a small number (two or three) of of
UH-60 Black Hawks in crashes where the flight control system suddenly
commanded extreme pitch or attitude changes. Why? In all the crash
cases, EMI from nearby TV or FM transmitters was found to be the
proximate cause. The Army, and Sikorsky, immediately went to work to
better shield the FCS from EMI.

It's interesting to note that the Navy's SH-60, a UH-60 variant, was
designed from the start to be EMI-immune. Ships' radars operate in the
10-100kW range, and that's a lot of EMI when you're landing 15-20m
away from the radar mast.

- -Paul

- -- 
Paul Robichaux, KD4JZG       | Do you support free speech even when you don't
perobich@ingr.com            | like what's being said?
		 Be a cryptography user. Ask me how.


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On Wed, 12 Jul 1995, Paul Robichaux wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> 
> Ed Carp said:
> 
> > This sounds like absolute propoganda.  If you do the calculations, you'll 
> > see that a 1 watt transmitter sitting 100 feet away from your target will 
> > generate an EMF less than that 1000kW ERP TV transmitter array you just 
> > flew over.  If aircraft avionics were *that* sensitive, we'd have planes 
> > falling out of the sky, and we don't. 
> 
> Oh, yes-- we do. The Army lost a small number (two or three) of of
> UH-60 Black Hawks in crashes where the flight control system suddenly
> commanded extreme pitch or attitude changes. Why? In all the crash
> cases, EMI from nearby TV or FM transmitters was found to be the
> proximate cause. The Army, and Sikorsky, immediately went to work to
> better shield the FCS from EMI.
> 
> It's interesting to note that the Navy's SH-60, a UH-60 variant, was
> designed from the start to be EMI-immune. Ships' radars operate in the
> 10-100kW range, and that's a lot of EMI when you're landing 15-20m
> away from the radar mast.

Well, I was speaking of commercial aircraft, not military, but the point 
is taken.  I haven't had occasion to use my packet radio lashup on a 
UH-60 -- yet ;)
--
Ed Carp, N7EKG    			Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com
801/534-8857 voicemail			801/460-1883 digital pager
Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key		an88744@anon.penet.fi

Q.	What's the trouble with writing an MS-DOS program to emulate Clinton?
A.	Figuring out what to do with the other 639K of memory.