Looks like you can recreate images on LCD screens remotely. I’m not sure how it works with moving images, but this is pretty high-end if you ask me. It is interesting to hear that NATO spent a lot of money to protect against a similar attack against CRTs. And also RFIDs are still being talked about for their flaws and the paranoia behind them.

One of my big things is how our security, laws, and entire culture have changed due to how efficient the digital world has become. Music has always been pirated, only now it can be done on massive scales. In the past, things like RFID and LCD eavesdropping were really only issues for extremely high-end governments and corporations. No one else cared, had threats that had these capabilities, had the assets valuable enough to protect to justify the cost, nor had the money to afford it anyway. We’re talking huge companies, governments, and military, and even just subsets of those.

But these days, things like this can become a reality for more people. RFID might be something we have in all our pets soon, cars, electronics, maybe even ourselves. LCD eavesdropping is still a bit exotic, but if it really is as easy as it seems, this could become a backroom concern for corporate espionage or even internal investigations. Can you imagine being assigned the task of sitting in a conference room and recording images on the screen of a VP two offices away as part of an internal investigation in addition to network and disk forensics? Could you maybe drop a magnetized object on the back of the monitor which automatically logs all the images much like a keylogger? What about the potential range of such eavesdropping? Can it be thwarted fully by focusing on the physical security angle or will LCDs be obsolete in 7 years just like CRTs are now, thus the vulnerability will slowly ebb away?

Some interesting thoughts…