Daniel Genkin of the University of Michigan, Mihir Pattani of the
University of Pennsylvania, Roei Schuster of Cornell Tech and Tel Aviv
University, and Eran Tromer of Tel Aviv University and Columbia
University investigated a potential new avenue of remote surveillance
that they have dubbed "Synesthesia":
a side-channel attack that can reveal the contents of a remote screen,
providing access to potentially sensitive information based solely on
"content-dependent acoustic leakage from LCD screens."
The research, supported by the Check Point Institute
for Information Security at Tel Aviv University (of which Schuster and
Tromer are members) and funded in part by the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, examined what amounts to an acoustic form of Van Eck phreaking.
While Van Eck phreaking uses radio signal emissions that leak from
display connectors, the Synesthesia research leverages "coil whine," the
audio emissions from transformers and other electronic components
powering a device's LCD display. more