# Protecting Data at Risk of Unintentional Electromagnetic Emanation: TEMPEST Profiling
###### Abstract  
Unintentional electromagnetic (EM) emissions often include information about the data processed by electronic devices. Intrusion based on an unintentional EM emission leaves no evidence of an attacker's activity, while the data owner is unaware that it has been lost. EM attacks can be performed without physically damaging a device that operates regularly. The most typical intrusion activities involve sensitive data exfiltration using various methods that do not require the physical connection of devices to the computer network or communication channels. This research examines EM emissions from computer monitors, wireless keyboards and mice, printers, scanners, conductors, piezoelectric sensors (PES), and radio frequency identification (RFID) devices. The telecommunication electronics material protected from emanating spurious transmissions (TEMPEST) profiling as a performance engineering of the EM footprint is discussed. This study also presents different TEMPEST standards and highlights their importance concerning unintentional EM radiation. TEMPEST; electromagnetic emission; cyber security; data protection; network security +
Footnote †: journal: Medical Engineering  
0000-0001-9993-3300-3300-3300-3300-3300-3300-3300-3300-33000-33  
to be important in maintaining the monitoring of information security. Furthermore, other protective measures can be applied. A special glass providing EM protection (a shielding window) can be placed on the computer monitor to eliminate high-frequency components, which increases the difficulty of reproducing the EM signals [3]. In [4], the authors consider the interception and security risks of wireless keyboard signals, regardless of communication protocols, noise, and physical obstacles. This article further explores the topic of wireless keyboards, mice, and universal serial bus (USB) dongles and focuses on preventive measures against attackers' malicious activity. Printers as sources of unintentional EM emissions are discussed in [5; 6; 7]. Using commercial printers connected via a local area network is quite common for printing large amounts of data in office environments. These printers are typically equipped with various components, such as hard drives, power and signal lines, connectors, and wireless transceivers. Measuring the EM emissions near the printer enables the reconstruction of printed data. EM leakage from various sources, such as signal lines, power lines, telephone lines, and water pipes, can also cause numerous security issues, as discussed in [8]. The main cause of concern in such scenarios is the characteristic of the conductor acting as an antenna at high frequencies. Advances in wireless communications research have led to numerous new applications that require the acquisition and transmission of vast amounts of sensor data. Processing and storage of data from sensors subjected to EM interference (EMI) and inductive coupling are discussed in [9]. In the context of RFID, attackers primarily focus on probing a wide range of operating frequencies from the device's EM spectrum. It is important to emphasize that accessibility makes RFID tags very vulnerable to side-channel attacks. Different types of security issues in RFID are discussed in [10; 11; 12]. The main problem associated with unwanted EM emanation is that the data can be accessed via EM emissions from electronic components and devices that process sensitive information. One type of protection against intrusions based on unintentional EM emissions is to place electronic equipment and devices in Faraday cages and shielded chambers. Other measures include shielding, zoning, separating transmission lines, and masking. In the context of unintentional EM emissions, we have discussed in detail the security issues associated with EM leakage from computer monitors [13] and wireless keyboards [4] in our previous work.