Technology risk without safeguards

Wed Nov 4 21:19:50 UTC 2020

> Vulnerability to EMI is a lot less than folks imagine.
>
I hope that is true.

> Malicious use of EMI emitters to harm
> human health is definitely out of scope for
> this list.
>
I am of the belief that people are as important as electronic equipment in
the gamut of workplace safety in the ambit of internal sabotage, be it data
center or elsewhere.

On Thursday, November 5, 2020, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 4, 2020 at 11:37 AM Suresh Kalkunte <sskalkunte at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Your comments gives me an overall impression that data center equipment
> are on average adequately protected, that is good. Also, public discussion
> on the risk of intentional EMI is a big positive.
>
> I watched a T.V. program a few years ago where an investigative
> reporter did a piece on the risks of malicious electromagnetic
> interference (EMI). He did a demonstration where he tried to cause a
> car to malfunction. A bad actor could cause highway crashes! He had a
> great big apparatus about the size of the car's engine compartment and
> pointed at the car. Nothing happened. So he moved it about 3 feet from
> the car. Nothing happened. So he opened the car's hood and pointed it
> right at the engine. Finally the engine started sputtering and the
> dashboard electronics malfunctioned. The car, of course, remained
> completely controllable and when the EMI generator was turned off it
> resumed normal operation undamaged.
>
> I've also had lightning hit about 50 feet from my unshielded computer
> room. It fried a little plastic COTS router that was connected by
> about 100 feet of UTP ethernet to my core router. The core router
> crashed but worked fine after a reboot. No other equipment was
> affected.
>
> Vulnerability to EMI is a lot less than folks imagine.
>
> > However, targeting a human using powerful RF is uncharacterized (please
> see https://github.com/sureshs20/De_Risk_Technology). If the RF emitters
> conducive for getting re-purposed for malice were prohibitively expensive
> _or_ the expertise to re-purpose RF for malice was very complex _or_ if
> there were diagnostic/forensic tests to detect foul-play using powerful RF,
> I would not be pursuing this initiative to safeguard
> unsuspecting/defenseless targets of opportunity.
>
> Malicious use of EMI emitters to harm human health is definitely out
> of scope for this list.
>
> Regards,
> Bill Herrin
>
> --
> Hire me! https://bill.herrin.us/resume/
>
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