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Early TEMPEST Phone From NSA Museum

This large, rotary phone was a prototype for a TEMPESTed telephone. TEMPEST is a cover name that is now used throughout the government and industry to refer to frequency emanations leaking from electronic devices as they are used. Even back in World War II, the U.S. Army was warned about a teletype mixer that emitted signals each time the machine stepped. The signals could be intercepted 100 or more feet away revealing the plaintext message.

This early prototype TEMPESTed telephone was mounted on a plaque and presented to Lowell Frazer in 1985, presumably upon his retirement. Frazer was a communications security mathematician whose leadership spurred government and industry interaction in the development of TEMPEST equipment. He also ensured that TEMPEST concerns were part of the cryptographic evaluation process.

To learn a little about TEMPEST history, read “TEMPEST: A Signal Problem”.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 23rd, 2016 at 22:00 and is filed under Comms, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “Early TEMPEST Phone From NSA Museum”

  1. Gerard says:
    August 23, 2016 at 22:14

    Its identical to the phone I grew up with, kids today have no idea what a dial on a phone means

  2. Bill says:
    August 23, 2016 at 22:29

    I visited their museum a couple years ago, pretty neat, but they were trying to raise funds for a needed revamp and up date. Worth checking out if you’re near Meade and are a cryptonut

  3. Hank says:
    August 24, 2016 at 01:05

    Having a crypto flash back from USAF days at crypto school at Lackland.

  4. Stu says:
    August 24, 2016 at 04:51

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