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Comments (69)
- sholladayThis made me think of The Thing, a fascinating listening device made by the Soviets that was completely passive until powered remotely. Very difficult to detect when unpowered.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)And then I thought, something similar might be possible for video. Turns out, yep.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8719264The Eye of Sauron paper does acknowledge the limitations that would likely prevent it from working against such a device. Impressive nonetheless. True privacy/security is just very hard!
- walrus01TSCM services commonly employ non linear junction detectors, if you have a legit need and money to spend and worry that your offices have been bugged (or are at risk of being bugged), you absolutely can hire them. This isn't really a new thing. More advanced highly portable RF equipment, portable spectrum analyzers and things built with relatively low-cost SDR that talk to Linux SBCs make the equipment to do this a lot less costly than it used to be.If the intention is to RF "illuminate" an array of DRAM, portable GaN based amps in different bands capable of directing RF at an area (let's say, with a set of horn antennas on a plastic rolling cart being taken around an office) are also a lot smaller and less power hungry than they used to be.Edit: Looking at the Zhang PDF, the box next to the laptop in figure 15 is a USRP 210 SDR, and a basic log periodic antenna on a PCB.https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=USRP+B210...https://www.ettus.com/all-products/ub210-kit/So really this boils down to "we're using a COTS SDR repurposed as a spectrum analyzer and we've written custom software to sniff what it looks like when DRAM is actively being used in a small embedded device". Some serious TSCM firms have been doing this for 35 years, just the equipment is a hell of a lot smaller and cheaper now.
- ZanfaDan Gelbart's lecture on sensors[0] explains another fascinating method in detail using RF as well as the optical scanning method mentioned in the original video. The full lecture is worth a watch, but the timestamp is where the RF method explanation starts.[0] https://youtu.be/0MtRxX0crjU?t=1815
- redanddeadIt’s really clever.The idea is that cameras read/write to a disk. That cause electromagnetic radiation that is detectable.Then this drone does [something/move/stimulus] to trigger more read/write/EM radiation.But part of me can’t believe this is the cutting edge in 2026? Feels like 60s engineers would’ve thought about this
- declan_robertsWhen I stay at an Airbnb I open up my camera app and look around the room with the lights off. Anything emitting IR light shows up very obviously.
- BlackRabbit1Interesting - but 800-900MHz (the mentioned harmonic frequencies) are blasted with LTE and 5G in Europe.But maybe with a sharp filter (there's a gap between up- and downlink) it can be used with a RTLSDR. But the RTLSDR hates close strong signals as its 8-Bit ADC doesn't have much dynamic range.
- bob1029The final boss of detection doesn't need the camera to be powered at all.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_junction_detector
- ashkankianiThis is a genius approach. I was wondering how to approach this problem myself the other day, and other things like audio poisoning for ambient listening devices. This gives me hope for being able to actually fight in the cat and mouse game of privacy that's coming up.
- someguyiguessEye of Sauron to counter Palantir. Makes sense.
- mr_robotoWho calls cameras spy cameras? They must be angling for government contracts.
- willguestthis adds to the field sometimes known as 'sousveillance'. i even saw one in AR that would show you the field covered by the cameras. thanks for the effort!
- gblarggSo the mitigation is to have larger memory buffers so processing/emissions can be delayed (assuming simple shielding isn't enough).
- ranger_dangerThe speaker in the video was extremely difficult for me to understand but the idea seems quite clever.What I'm most surprised about is just how well it actually works... I did not think such EM fluctuations would be usably detectable from several meters away... but I suppose this may be moreso due to improper/lack of shielding in the first place, which I would think should be easily fixable in most products to mitigate this type of detection.
- serialxSomething like this seems to be more practical? https://www.crowdsupply.com/scale-rf/quadrf
- JackobrienThis feels very impactful for national security and corporate espionage.
- rsamtravisOkay who can build me one of these?
- asdffBack to microfilm for the spies
- akoboldfryingReally interesting concept! I would not have thought of EMR variation as a usable side channel for this.IIUC, the EMR increases following scene changes (like a light being turned on or off) are a result of the fact that video codecs try hard to compress similar images. So, I speculate that an "extremely bad codec" that simply dumps raw pixels to storage would not produce such variation, and therefore remain undetectable?
- IshKebabThat's clever. I think you could improve localisation by instead of just turning the light on and off, have a spinning light like a lighthouse, and then match the timing of it with the timing of the EMR changes.
- gfalcaocool
- bezusfaphoonphenomenal
- M95DThe communists are helping us fight capitalist surveillance... Oh, the irony!
- ralusekThe former owner of my house has cameras littered around the outside of the house and 2 inside (these aren't discrete they're specifically security cameras). I'm like 95% sure I took over the appropriate accounts. My neighbors said that he was a former Airforce guy and was obsessed with gadgets and "spy conventions," though.Long story short: I'd like this device please.
- bossyTeacherI feel bad for Tolkien. The names in his beautiful works are being semantically hijacked by tech bros and authoritarian types with surveillance wet dreams.
- soltanov[flagged]
- DatageneratorTag 2024?
- anonundefined