Your Computer is Hot -- And I Know Where You Live
Image source: PopSci.comAnnalee Newitz writes on the PopSci Blog:
This morning at the Chaos Communication Congress, Cambridge Ph.D. student Steven Murdoch knocked everybody's socks off with a presentation [.pdf] about how people can unmask an anonymous online publisher by remotely monitoring his computer's temperature.More here.
It sounds about as tin foil hat as you can get, but the trick is real. Every computer's clock is run via quartz crystals, but those crystals change their speeds as the computer heats up. Therefore a computer's clock runs nanoseconds faster or slower depending on the overall temperature of the unit. This process is called clock skew, and it creates a uniquely off-kilter time "fingerprint" for every computer.
posted by Fergie @ 12/28/2006 01:47:00 PM
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