Tomorrow Today
Data Theft – The Spy who came from the Coffee Cup
It could be straight out of a spy film: The target person is typing classified information into a laptop. The secret agent sitting across the table is able to read everything on the screen even though it is turned away from him.
The traitor is sitting innocently in the form of a nearby coffee cup. A team of scientists in Saarbrücken have discovered that weak reflections on objects or even the cornea of an eye can be used to spy out data from computer screens. Even a plain white wall can become a tool of espionage. The computer experts are specialists in the crucial question: How well protected are PC users from data theft? While many software developers concentrate on fighting viruses, worms and Trojans, the researchers in Saarbrücken have taken a look at the computer user’s surroundings. And they’ve found that a simple telescope, a camera and the right image-processing software can enable anyone to read confidential data from the computer screens in the building next door. For the cunning and criminally-minded, it opens up new possibilities of carrying out industrial espionage, snooping out bank data or dogging celebrities. The computer scientists obtained their best results with the reflections from PC user's own reading spectacles and from a teapot standing on the desk next to the computer screen. Yet however sophisticated their snooping methods may be, the answer to the problem is simple: keep the curtains closed.
