[NetBehaviour] Computer Warming a Privacy Risk.

marc marc.garrett at furtherfield.org
Sun Dec 31 13:30:20 CET 2006


Computer Warming a Privacy Risk.

By Quinn Norton.

BERLIN -- A security researcher has a devised a novel attack on online 
anonymity systems in which he literally takes a computer's temperature 
over the internet.

The attack uses a phenomenon called "clock skew" -- the tendency for the 
precise clocks in modern computers to drift off of the correct time at 
slightly different rates, which can be affected by heat.

"When a crystal is manufactured, it has a clock skew, and it's different 
for each crystal (throughout its) lifetime," explains Steven J. Murdoch, 
a Cambridge University researcher who discussed his work at the Chaos 
Communications Congress on Thursday.

more...
http://wapurl.co.uk/?3BBI41H



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