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ABSTRACT
Since the major British banks first purchased computers in the 1960s, they have been concerned with the security challenges that these machines presented. One of the most potent risks was TEMPEST, the discovery that computers emitted radiation which could reveal the content of information processed by them, even if it had been encrypted. Archival material recently uncovered within the Bank of England’s archives from the mid-late 1970s is presented here to provide a first look at how the Bank evaluated the credibility of the threat posed by TEMPEST and how it sought to manage this new risk.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Highland “The Tempest”, 10–18.
2. “Tomorrow’s World”, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYYm9Lin8X4 [Accessed 10 April 2018].
3. Kuhn and Anderson, “Soft Tempest”, 124.
4. Omand, “Secret Past”, 5.
5. Johnson, American Cryptology, 1.
6. Aldrich, “British Intelligence”, 343.
7. Hennessy, Secret State, 5.
8. Herman, “Military Intelligence since 1945ʹ”.
9. Quoted in Hennessy, Secret State, 5.
10. See above 7.11.
11. Quoted in Hennessy, Secret State, 12.
12. Wright, Spycatcher, 110-112.
13. Aldrich, GCHQ, 214.
14. NCSC, “TEMPEST and Electromagnetic Security”, https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/scheme/tempest-and-electromagnetic-security [Accessed 6 April 2018].
15. Aldrich refers to this in GCHQ, 214-215.
16. van Eck, “Electromagnetic Radiation”, 269-286.
17. Ibid., 215. Kuhn and Anderson in 1998 said that military organisations knew about the phenomenon since at least the early 1960s. A technical report on TEMPEST including a brief overview of the open literature can be found in Kuhn, Compromising Emanations, Number 577, December 2003.
18. See Ryan Singel, “Declassified NSA Document”, 29 April 2008.
19. TEMPEST: A Signal Problem, 1972, 27, http://jproc.ca/crypto/tempest.pdf [Accessed 14 May 2018].
20. Ibid., 27.
21. Ibid., 26-27.
22. Ibid., 27.
23. Barclays Archive, File 0178-0004, “Computers in Banking”, February 1972, p.3.
24. Ibid., 2; Ibid., 14.
25. The New Scientist, 27 July 1961, 236.
26. Bank of England Archive, File 5A199/6, “Extract”, 30 January 1975.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Bank of England Archive, File 5A199/6, “Security of Data”, 18 March 1975.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. CESG, “About Us”, https://www.cesg.gov.uk/articles/cesg-information-security-arm-gchq [Accessed 19 February 2016].
33. Bank of England Archive, File 5A199/6, “Computer Systems”, 10 June 1975.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Bank of England Archive, File 5A199/6, “Security”, 25 July 1975.
38. Bank of England Archive, File 5A199/6, “Extract”, 24 July 1975.
39. Bank of England Archive, File 5A199/6, “Audit Committee”, 21 January 1977.
40. Bank of England Archive, File 5A199/6, “Security”, 11 September 1978.
41. Ibid.
42. See above 40. 1978.
43. Ibid.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Ashley Sweetman
Ashley Sweetman is a PhD candidate in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. His thesis looks at computer security in the United Kingdom’s financial sector between 1960 and 1990.