Law enforcement and intelligence agents may have a new tool to read the data displayed on a suspect's computer monitor, even when they can't see the screen. Marcus Kuhn, an associate professor at Cambridge University in England, presented research Monday . . .

Law enforcement and intelligence agents may have a new tool to read the data displayed on a suspect's computer monitor, even when they can't see the screen. Marcus Kuhn, an associate professor at Cambridge University in England, presented research Monday showing how anybody with a brawny PC, a special light detector and some lab hardware could reconstruct what a person sees on the screen by catching the reflected glow from the monitor.

The results surprised many security researchers gathered here at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) Symposium on Security and Privacy because they had assumed that discerning such detail was impossible.

"No one even thought about the optical issues" of computer information "leakage," said Fred Cohen, security practitioner in residence for the University of New Haven. "This guy didn't just publish, he blew (the assumptions) apart."

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