3PB01

On Compromising Emanations from Computer VDU and Its Interception

DONG Shiwei XU Jiadong ZHANG Haobin WU Changying

(Department of Electronic Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072 )

Abstract: VDU is the main source of
electromagnetic emanations of computer system. The
acceleration field and radiated field of the. equivalent
electric dipole of the electron beam in CRT are both
analyzed as well as that of deflection coils. They all cause
risk to information security of VDU. Method to
reconstruct video information by intercepting emanations
form VDU is discussed in this paper and an intercepting
system is presented, with which. trusty experimental
results are acquired.
Key words: VDU, emanation, radiation, electron
beam, interception, reconstruct
1. Introduction
As ITEs (information technology equipments) are
applied more and more widely, “inforwar attack” to and
“inforwar defense ” of them have attracted worldwide
attention. Computer system, as a key role of ITEs, is all
along the focus of this attention. Research on
compromising emanations from computer system can he
traced back to as early as 1950’s. As time goes on,
incidental concerning compromising emanation
from computer system have been reported to take place
around the world and some important documents have
come into people’s including Wim von Eck’s
and Peter Smulders’ papers. Their researches show that
electromagnetic leakage from VDU (visual display unit)
dominates among electromagnetic radiation form the
whole computer system, which agree well with OUT
Compromising emanation from computer VDU and
its interception are chiefly sNdied in this paper and a
novel intercepting system is put forward different from
Eck‘s. Reconstructed results are given using our system.
2. Theory
2.1 Electromagnetic Gelds radiated by VDU
In computer VDU, CRT (cathode ray tube), Z axes
components, PCB, video cable are all sources of
electromagnetic radiation but they don’t make the same
contribution to compromising emanations. In fact,
electromagnetic radiation from CRT, including the
electron beam and deflection coils, is the biggest trouble
for information security.
2.1.1 emanationsfrom the electron beam
Video information on VDU screen comes into being
when the electron beam bombards on the fluorescent
screen. According to classical electrodynamics, only those
charged particles traveling with acceleration radiate
electromagnetic field named acceleration field. In CRT
radiation of a single electron is strongest when it traveling
between the shielding grid and the first anode‘4’.So
electron beam in this accelerating region determines the
acceleration field given as follow and its radiation pattern
is shown in Fig.1.
c
E=- I 2 Id
0 dlsin& (1)
4mOc r v(1 - v c o s ~ / c )

experimental results.

0-7803-7277-8/02/$10.00 02002 IEEE.

692
where I is the current of the electron beam, c is light
velocity in vacuum, v and i are velocity and
acceleration of electron in accelerating region in CRT.
Fig.1 Acceleration field pattern of the
electron beam. Here z axes is parallel to
the direction electrons travel.
The varying current of the electron beam, controlled
by video signals, also lead to electromagnetic radiation.
It’s reasonable to model the electron beam in CRT as an
equivalent electric dipole discussed in [5] and its radiated
far fields are
(3)
H = -jPI1 e- jpr sin O$
(4)
4w
where 1 is the length of the electron beam, Pis wave
number.
Obviously the acceleration field of the electron beam
and radiated field of its equivalent electric dipole are both
directly proportional to I while I is under the control of
video signals. It can be concluded that emanations from
the electron beam contain video signals.
2.1.2 emanations from depi?ctioncoik
There are two kinds of deflection coils in VDU
horizontal deflection coils and vertical ones. They can be
modeled as magnetic dipoles whose radiation is discussed
in [ 5 ] and is presented here.
693
H = - - eZLS -jprsins~ (6)
l2
r
where I is saw-tooth wave current flowing in deflection
coils and S is the area of the magnetic dipole.
Radiation of deflection coils contains
synchronization signals which are very important for the
reconstruction of video information.
2.2 Techniques of video information reconstruction
On the back of the VDU screen is a layer of
fluorescent powder. When the electron beam impinges on
a spot on the screen, the fluorescent powder there will
glow. The density of the electron beam determines the
illumination of the visible light. As the electron beam
scans the screen line by line under the control of
deflection coils, a frame of picture on a VDU screen is
made up of a number of lines (or columns) of pixels. For
“word ” documents an individual character is generated by
the electron beam carrying square-wave pulse current, the
pulses properly arranged, as illustrated in Fig.2.
Fig.2 Mechanism of imaging on VDU
screen. (a) shows the pixel matrix of
character “ A and (b) shows current pulse
sequence of the electron beam.
For monochromatic character if we receive the
electromagnetic radiation from the electron beam when it
bombards on one dot on the screen, it’s easy to determine
the strength of the current that moment so the intensity of
the brightness at that pixel. That is to say, the content of
VDU screen can he reconstructed after the
electromagnetic radiation is intercepted of the electron
beam when it bombards each pixel on the screen. In the
mean time electromagnetic radiation from deflection coils
also should be intercepted which is in favor of arranging
 the reconsbucted pixels in their original style. It should be
pointed out that the intercepted signals have been
transformed into digital data before reconstruction.
To conceal the negative influence of interference of
low Frequency and noise of high frequency, FIR digital
filter must be imposed on the data. In order to improve the I I

quality of the reconstructed picture further, point operation Data acquisition card

and algebraic operation are carried on the picture dataL6].

Point operation is aimed at enhancing contrast and can be
expressed as follow
Fig.3 The intercepting system,
Nx,Y) = f[A(x,y)l (7)
where f ( 0 ) is the gray-scale transformation function.
Algebraic operation is used to suppress additive noise and 4 Experiments
can be expressed as follow

4.1 Emanations test

We measured the electromagnetic emanations from
computer system especially VDU in the shielded chamber
where K represents the sampling times of a frame of
and found
picture. For any pixel in the picture the power SNR
Electromagnetic emanations From VDU dominates
(signal-to-noise'ratio) can be defined as
among the whole system ;
- VDU radiates significantly below IOMHz as
illustrated in Fig.4;
The strongest electromagnetic radiation is
and it will increase K times through algebraic operation
received over VDU.
illustrated by Eq.(8).
4.2 A reconstructed example
The amplitude SNR is presented as follow:
Video information can be reconstructed by
processing the digital signals attained with data
acquisition card. During our experiment the resolution of
This equation explains how the quality of the picture is
VDU is set to 1024 X 768 and the vertical frequency 6OHz.
bettered.
A reconstructed example is given in Fig.5. As the electron
beam scans the VDU screen the pixels show one by one in
3. Intercepting system every line and the electromagnetic radiation of CRT is
sampled about once every 2.5 pixels. That is why the
In order to invalidate our researches we design a characters in the reconstructed picture are narrowed as
novel intercepting system shown in Fig.3. shown in Fig.5.
Here the forepart is composed of a loop antenna and an
amplifier. The maximum sampling rate of the data 5. Conclusion
acquisition card is up to 20M samples per second.

Electromagnetic emanation from VDU can lead to

jeopardous information leakage. The acceleration field of

694
 .. dipole both cause leakage of video signals and radiation of
E(dBmW) deflection coils causes leakage of synchronization signals.
Our researches show that it is feasible to commit
information interception 'by eavesdropping opposing
computer VDU, which is proved through our intercepting
experiments. The intercepting system proposed here is a
novel and efficient intercepting tool.

IOMHz References
(4 [ I ] Wim van Eck, Electromagnetic Radiation t o m Video

'E(dBmW) Display Units: An Eavesdropping Risk? Computer. &

11 Security(4), 1985.~~269-286.
[Z]Han Fang, Radiation emission tom CRT of computer VDU,
Rec.1990 IEEE Int. Symp. on EMC, Washington D.C., USA,
pp483-487.
[3] Servilio Sebastiani. Characterization to a TEMPEST

-69 testing laboratory and methodology for control to

9KHz
@)
Fig.4 Measured em radiation form VDU
below l0MHz when (a) the VDU is shut
off and @) the VDU is turned on.
l0MH
compromising emanation. IEEE International symposium on
EMC. Denver: 1998, 165-170
[4] Zeyu ZhangJun Zhao. Electrodynamics. Thinghua
University Publishing House.1987
[SI Renhai Lou,Guoxing Fu,Shujun Xiao.Engineering
electromagnetic theory Publishing House of Defense

Xi'an Industry,l991
[61 K.R.Castleman. Digital Image Processing, Prentice
Ha11.1998.

. . . __ .2 ..I
.

Fig.5 A reconstructed example where (a)

is the video information on VDU screen
and (b) is the reconstructed result.
the electron beam and radiation of its equivalent electric

695