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Van Eck phreaking

This
week I reread with pleasure all 918 pages of Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson and found out
that last time I had been extremely choosy in subplots. There are 4
major plots : one contemporary (a couple of geeks trying to set up a data-haven) and three
WW2 stories : the Waterhouse-plot about cracking Enigma and other
crypto-systems featuring a.o. Alan Turing, the Shaftoe-plot about the
crazy division 2702 trying to cover-up that Enigma has been broken and
the Goto Dengo-plot about hiding the Japanese Gold reserve in the
jungle. Five years ago I was mostly interested in the first two subplots
and later on in the book I jumped chapters quite a bit, it seems.

During the first read I assumed that the Van Eck
phreaking-bit was just another paranoid misconception of the two present
day main players Randy&Avi, but this week I wasn\’t so sure anymore so
the first thing I did when we came home was Googling on Van Eck phreaking which really does
exist!

Van Eck phreaking is a form of eavesdropping in which
special equipment is used to pick up telecommunication signals or data
within a computer device by monitoring and picking up the
electromagnetic fields.
The U.S. government has been involved
with EM interpretation for many years under a top-secret program
code-named “TEMPEST”.

It seems that in 1985 the
Dutch scientist Wim Van Eck wrote a paper \’Electromagnetic Radiation from Video Display Units:
An Eavesdropping Risk?\’
He concluded: “If no preventive measures
are taken, eavesdropping on a video-display unit is possible at several
hundred meters distance, using only a normal black-and-white TV
receiver, a directional antenna, and an antenna amplifier.” He proved
it by taking a BBC crew around London in a van, showing them what was on
the computer screens at various companies.
To me it seems that
putting your computer inside a Faraday cage is a simpler counter-measure than
the cumbersome method of Randy in the novel (but I have to admit, he
was in prison at the time…). There is a more detailed manual on
phreaking
available, but the best text I found (sofar) on Van Eck
phreaking is Soft Tempest: Hidden Data Transmission Using
Electromagnetic Emanations
by Markus G. Kuhn and Ross J.
Anderson.

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a noncommutative Grothendieck topology

We have seen that a non-commutative $l$-point is an
algebra$P=S_1 \\oplus … \\oplus S_k$with each $S_i$ a simple
finite dimensional $l$-algebra with center $L_i$ which is a separable
extension of $l$. The centers of these non-commutative points (that is
the algebras $L_1 \\oplus … \\oplus L_k$) are the open sets of a
Grothendieck-topology on
$l$. To define it properly, let $L$ be the separable closure of $l$
and let $G=Gal(L/l)$ be the so called absolute
Galois group. Consider the
category with objects the finite $G$-sets, that is : finite
sets with an action of $G$, and with morphisms the $G$-equivariant
set-maps, that is: maps respecting the group action. For each object
$V$ we call a finite collection of morphisms $Vi \\mapsto V$ a
cover of $V$ if the images of the finite number of $Vi$ is all
of $V$. Let $Cov$ be the set of all covers of finite $G$-sets, then
this is an example of a Grothendieck-topology as it satisfies
the following three conditions :

(GT1) : If
$W \\mapsto V$ is an isomorphism of $G$-sets, then $\\{ W \\mapsto
V \\}$ is an element of $Cov$.

(GT2) : If $\\{ Vi \\mapsto
V \\}$ is in $Cov$ and if for every i also $\\{ Wij \\mapsto Vi \\}$
is in $Cov$, then the collection $\\{ Wij \\mapsto V \\}$ is in
$Cov$.

(GT3) : If $\\{ fi : Vi \\mapsto V \\}$ is in $Cov$
and $g : W \\mapsto V$ is a $G$-morphism, then the fibered
products
$Vi x_V W = \\{ (vi,w) in Vi x W : fi(vi)=g(w) \\}$is
again a $G$-set and the collection $\\{ Vi x_V W \\mapsto V \\}$
is in $Cov$.

Now, finite $G$-sets are just
commutative separable $l$-algebras (that is,
commutative $l$-points). To see this, decompose a
finite $G$-set into its finitely many orbits $Oj$ and let $Hj$ be the
stabilizer subgroup of an element in $Oj$, then $Hj$ is of finite
index in $G$ and the fixed field $L^Hj$ is a finite dimensional
separable field extension of $l$. So, a finite $G$-set $V$
corresponds uniquely to a separable $l$-algebra $S(V)$. Moreover, a
finite cover $\\{ W \\mapsto V \\}$ is the same thing as saying
that $S(W)$ is a commutative separable $S(V)$-algebra. Thus,
the Grothendieck topology of finite $G$-sets and their covers
is anti-equivalent to the category of commutative separable
$l$-algebras and their separable commutative extensions.

This raises the natural question : what happens if we extend the
category to all separable $l$-algebras, that is, the category of
non-commutative $l$-points, do we still obtain something like a
Grothendieck topology? Or do we get something like a
non-commutative Grothendieck topology as defined by Fred Van
Oystaeyen (essentially replacing the axiom (GT 3) by a left and right
version). And if so, what are the non-commutative covers?
Clearly, if $S(V)$ is a commutative separable $l$-algebras, we expect
these non-commutative covers to be the set of all separable
$S(V)$-algebras, but what are they if $S$ is itself non-commutative,
that is, if $S$ is a non-commutative $l$-point?

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Fox & Geese


The game of Fox and Geese is usually played on a cross-like
board. I learned about it from the second volume of the first edition of
Winning Ways
for your Mathematical Plays
which is now reprinted as number 3 of
the series. In the first edition, Elwyn Berlekamp,
John Conway and
Richard Guy claimed that the value of their
starting position (they play it on an 8×8 chess board with the Geese on
places a1,c1,e1 and g1 and the Fox at place e8) has exact value

1 +
1/on

where on is the class of all ordinal numbers so
1/on is by far the smallest infinitesimal number you can think
of. In this second edition which I bought a week ago, they write about
this :

We remained steadfast in that belief until we heard
objections from John Tromp. We then also received correspondence
from Jonathan Weldon, who seemed to prove to somewhat higher standards
of rigor that
“The value of Fox-and-Geese is 2 +
1/on”

Oops! But of course they try to talk themselves out
of it

Who was right? As often happens when good folks
disagree, the answer is “both!” because it turns out that the parties
are thinking of different things. The Winning Ways argument
supposed an indefinitely long board, while Welton more reasonably
considered the standard 8×8 checkerboard.

Anyway, let us be
happy that the matter is settled now and even more because they add an
enormous amount of new material on the game to this second edition (in
chapter 20; btw. if after yesterday you are still interested in the game of sprouts you might be interested in
chapter 17 of the same volume). Most of the calculations were done with
the combinatorial game suite program of Aaron
Siegel.

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