Party Vibe

I remember reading about it in Spycatcher (around 1986) but the kit you needed was a lot more costly and bulkier (even so the UK govt implemented TEMPEST security rules for many critical computers which meant they have to be operated within a Faraday cage).

What has changed things loads is all of this equipment is available off the shelf to anyone who wants it and knows how to work it; and much of it has innocent legitimate uses such as watching TV or listening to broadcast radio.

On a table next to my desk at work is an old XP PC which is decoding all the pager transmissions at my site and also checking there is no interference on the radio frequencies (which is 100% legit as I got a license for this transmitter and its part of the conditions that I must ensure that it is not causing or being affected by interference) – the receiver is a €12 USB digital TV dongle; and the software is free/open source. That lot would have cost about €20 000 just 10 years ago….

Of course I doubt your average hipster in a café in Shoreditch or Ipswich has a great deal to fear but in the foreign countries where human rights groups operate not all of them are that tech aware and might not realise how easily even encrypted stuff can be monitored..

true; although a lot of targets make themselves vulnerable as they become seduced by convenience of having the gadget or simply don’t care what “free” apps they install; or can’t be arsed to consider “how/why does it work? what else could it be transmitting or receiving?” I’ve found all sorts of worrying things on line in the clear like peoples entire personal mobile phone directories – when I haven’t even been looking specifically for them but have been trying to track down telemarketers or even helping a work colleague check if a phone number they are dialling is correct.

At the same time a lot of the higher profile organisations who expect to be targets still transmit a lot of info in the clear (especially through the radio airwaves) but they are careful not to give away “all the pieces of the jigsaw”.

I’ve also noticed infosec awareness varies wildly across cultures and backgrounds – unfortunately it does seem to be a trend that all the “bad/authoritarian” régimes (or at least those ones painted as such by so-called “liberal western media”) place a far higher value on science and engineering and most importantly educating younger people in these fields and finding employment for at least the best of them than Europe and the USA.