TEMPEST Font Protects Text Data against RF Electromagnetic Attack

Nowadays an electromagnetic penetration process of electronic devices has a big significance. Processed information in electronic form could be protected in different ways. Very often used methods limit the levels of valuable emissions. But such methods could not always be implemented in commercial devices. A new solution (soft tempest) is proposed. The solution is based on TEMPEST font. The font does not possess distinctive features. This phenomenon causes that at an output of Side Channel Attack the possibilities of recognition of each character which appears on the reconstructed image for sources in the form of graphic lines (VGA and DVI) are limited. In this way the TEMPEST font protects processed data against electromagnetic penetration not only for VGA and DVI standards. The data are protected during printing them on laser printers too

Optical TEMPEST

Research on optical TEMPEST has moved forward since 2002 when the first pair of papers on the subject emerged independently and from widely separated locations in the world within a week of each other. Since that time, vulnerabilities have evolved along with systems, and several new threat vectors have consequently appeared. Although the supply chain ecosystem of Ethernet has reduced the vulnerability of billions of devices through use of standardised PHY solutions, other recent trends including the Internet of Things (IoT) in both industrial settings and the general population, High Frequency Trading (HFT) in the financial sector, the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and inexpensive drones have made it relevant again for consideration in the design of new products for privacy. One of the general principles of security is that vulnerabilities, once fixed, sometimes do not stay that way.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures; accepted to the International Symposium and Exhibition on Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC Europe 2018), 27--30 August 2018, in Amsterdam, The Netherland