Data Leakage
“Hidden in the central processors of many computers used in the Vietnam War,” Parker says, “were miniature radio transmitters capable of broadcasting the contents of the computers to a remote receiver.
“They were discovered when the computers were returned to the United States from Vietnam.”
It was a data-leakage problem—defined by Parker and other pros as the removal of data or copies of it from a computer or a computer center. Culprits can even smuggle out secrets by hiding them in apparently routine reports. “Data leakage,” he says, “might be conducted through use of Trojan horse, logic bomb, and scavenging methods.”
You don’t have to be in the Vietcong or KGB, of course, to spy on a computer by radio. Today a smart snoop can walk casually into your computer area and leave behind a miniature transmitter—perhaps hooked up to the maze of wires that snake under the floor of many modern offices. “I could then find out everything that you were sending for a year,” says Harold Joseph Highland, “which is the life of the unit I could transmit with. I could buy it for
9.50 from any of the large supply houses. There’s one more expensive that will transmit up to five miles away. With the forty-buck one I can park across from the building and keep a tape recorder going.”