TEMPEST

TEMPEST is a National Security Agency specification and a NATO certification  referring to spying on information systems through leaking emanations, including unintentional radio or electrical signals, sounds, and vibrations. TEMPEST covers both methods to spy upon others and also how to shield equipment against such spying. The protection efforts are also known as emission security (EMSEC), which is a subset of communications security (COMSEC).

The NSA methods for spying upon computer emissions are classified, but some of the protection standards have been released by either the NSA or the Department of Defense. Protecting equipment from spying is done with distance, shielding, filtering, and masking. The TEMPEST standards mandate elements such as equipment distance from walls, amount of shielding in buildings and equipment, and distance separating wires carrying classified vs. unclassified materials, filters on cables, and even distance and shielding between wires or equipment and building pipes. Noise can also protect information by masking the actual data.

While much of TEMPEST is about leaking electromagnetic emanations, it also encompasses sounds and mechanical vibrations. For example, it is possible to log a user's keystrokes using the motion sensor inside smartphones. Compromising emissions are defined as unintentional intelligence-bearing signals which, if intercepted and analyzed (side-channel attack), may disclose the information transmitted, received, handled, or otherwise processed by any information-processing equipment.

Many specifics of the TEMPEST standards are classified, but some elements are public. Current United States and NATO Tempest standards define three levels of protection requirements:

Additional standards include:

The NSA and Department of Defense have declassified some TEMPEST elements after Freedom of Information Act requests, but the documents black out many key values and descriptions. The declassified version of the TEMPEST test standard is heavily redacted, with emanation limits and test procedures blacked out. A redacted version of the introductory Tempest handbook NACSIM 5000 was publicly released in December 2000. Additionally, the current NATO standard SDIP-27 (before 2006 known as AMSG 720B, AMSG 788A, and AMSG 784) is still classified.

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