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Radio Fingerprinting

Radio Fingerprinting. 1960’s to 21 st century. World War Two. From an old timer’s memoirs : The USN radio intelligence organization grew from 75 officers, 645 enlisted personnel, and 10 civilians in December 1941 to 1,499 officers, 6,908 enlisted and 47 civilians by war's end.  

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Radio Fingerprinting

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  1. Radio Fingerprinting 1960’s to 21st century

  2. World War Two • From an old timer’s memoirs : • The USN radio intelligence organization grew from 75 officers, 645 enlisted personnel, and 10 civilians in December 1941 to 1,499 officers, 6,908 enlisted and 47 civilians by war's end.   • Although in Naval communications in WW II, I did not hear of the use of oscilloscopes in radio intelligence work.   • They may have been used but I have doubts about the extent of their use or importance in "radio fingerprinting."   • It was more by using radio direction finding, evaluation of volume and type of traffic sent by the Japanese, and identification of individual Japanese operators by their "fists" or style of CW (continuous wave) sending which primarily contributed to successful radio intelligence results.

  3. US MILITARY DEFINITION (1960’s) • RFP. This is a process, called radio fingerprinting, of identifying enemy ship radio transmitters by the characteristics of the emission from the particular transmitter. It involves excellent receiving conditions on shore, oscilloscopes and high speed photographic equipment.

  4. What can be characterised • Chirp (crystal oscillators) • Bounce (PLLs, damped oscillation/overshoot) • Hand-sent morse styles • Amount of AM on FM signal • Amount of FM on AM signal

  5. Basis (manual system 1970s) • Receive, initiate optical recording • Have “expert” compare with paper oscillogram library • Initiate DF if deemed worthwhile

  6. How would this be done today • Receive , if “interesting” press “RFP button • New signal can now be compared and categorised . • Auto DF if desired • FFT easy on PC etc. Storage (and backup) not an issue either

  7. USA Pink Panther • Nickname due to pink light sensitive paper from visicorder • Verbalise on GCHQ equivalent (optical recorder) & its dicey galvo adjustments.

  8. Tempest • Still fairly secret • Monitoring of emissions to limit detectable EM or electrical emanations from electronic equipment • PC, Monitor, mains cables,USB leads & other external connections all radiate • Definitive work is Markus Kuhn’s thesis (Cambridge Uni with Ross Anderson). • http://www.tsc-global.com and http://www.consumertronics.net/

  9. Tempest (continued) • Conceived in 1950s due to USA paranoia • Spycatcher book – tells how UK failed to crack French diplomatic ciphered msgs re EEC in 1960 but then used weak secondary signal and found plain text ! • Real systems from late 1960s • Telecommunications Electronics Material Protected from Emanating Spurious Transmissions

  10. Tempest • Tempest shielded (approved) ratings 1-3 • 1 is mil. Only; 2 needs government approval, 3 is commercially available • NATO equiv. AMSG 720B Emanations Lab Test Standard (Germany ). • GCHQ controls UK program • Common security usage now calls it EMSEC

  11. Tempest related • NONSTOP (classified) protection guidelines against inadvertent breaches by using handheld device (pager, phone etc.) near secure system • HIJACK (classified) compromising emanations using digital signals (not RF). Requires access to comms lines.

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