Polarized Screens to Hide Sensitive Data 264
NiugMan writes "NewScientist.com reports that Iizuka Denki Kogyo, a Tokio-based tech company has developed a monitor which appears to be blank if you stare at it with your eyes. Only by wearing a pair of polarised glasses you see stuff on it. The idea is to protect sensitive data from unauthorised personnel. Please take your special glasses with you when you take a coffee-break."
And if someone has two sets of 'special' glasses (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:And if someone has two sets of 'special' glasse (Score:2)
Get any LCD screen, remove the polarizing film and use some "special" glasses.
I have a nice pair of "special" glasses, they're called Bolle.
Tokio? (Score:1, Flamebait)
I hope thay surv eyes-creem. Maybee evin sooshee.
Re:Tokio? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Quick (Score:2, Funny)
Seems kind of silly... (Score:4, Insightful)
How about normal, polarized sunglasses and someone who can rotate their head?
Me thinks someone spent too much on research for this one.
Re:Seems kind of silly... (Score:5, Funny)
Head rotation devices will become illegal under the DMCA. I mean, looking away during the commercial break on is the same as stealing, right?
Re:Seems kind of silly... (Score:4, Funny)
And people thought we looked like dorks before...
A mirror is all you need! (Score:2)
A simlpe mirror (like the ones girls have in their hand-bags) is enough to filter out polarised light. Simply hold the mirror against the screen at an angle of about 45 degrees and view the screen through the mirror (use two mirrors, if you're unable to read backwards!): only light polarised vertically to the mirror will be reflcted and thus visible...
Simple optics one-o-one.
ms
What sort of lenses? (Score:1, Interesting)
exhorbiant cost? (Score:1)
Re:exhorbiant cost? (Score:4, Interesting)
> and is certainly not justified.
Actually, all LCD monitors *already* have the capability built in. The way they work is by using the polarization of light. All you have to do to make one of these "secure" panels that can only be viewed through polarized glasses is *remove* the polarizing film from the monitor.
Put simply, it should not be much more expensive to *leave out* part of the panel, eh?
Re:exhorbiant cost? (Score:1)
Which proves why posting is best done -after- reading the article. This is achieved by removing the polarising screen from a otherwise normal LCD. It can possibly be made cheaper than than a normal LCD.. though low volumes will doubtless result in a higher cost overall.
Be careful though... (Score:5, Funny)
OBEY!
CONSUME!
MARRY AND REPRODUCE!
(also, remember to stock up on bubblegum)
Re:Be careful though... (Score:2)
I guess it's better than all my money saying "COWBOYNEAL"....
Actually, this has been done already by MERL... (Score:4, Interesting)
We can actually hide secret images within any image or animation you'd like, not just an obvious blank screen. We also designed a cryptographically secure version which isn't cracked by simply having another pair of special glasses (you also need the private key). Check out the paper, it has some image examples (there might be a few technical errors in it that we later fixed but wasn't updated in the paper. I'm not at MERL anymore, so I haven't bothered checking really).
Also, we made a video demo for the conference which our technical report was accepted in paper form (at OzCHI2001). I have that video, and can digitize it if there's enough demand. By the way, while I was testing the glasses, I actually used They Live screenshots so that one could simulate Rowdy Roddy Piper's shock upon seeing the billboards and aliens. Also, we referenced John Carpenter in our paper.
Old News (Score:1)
Re:Old News (Score:1)
Re:Old News (Score:2)
I can see it now... (Score:3, Funny)
"I don't know, Bob. I had to look at it for something, it was off, and I tried to turn it on, but all that happened was that "power" light turned off."
Yeah. Brilliant idea.
Re:I can see it now... (Score:2)
Spy Tech (Score:1)
Sounds to me (Score:1)
Put it to some use (Score:1, Funny)
They needn't know that I'm actually wearing sunglasses, *sleeping* in front of a totally white screen, then.
Taking it one step further... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Taking it one step further... (Score:2)
What about polarized contact lenses?
Re:Taking it one step further... (Score:3, Interesting)
Smiley or not, that's actually a brilliant idea, that would render all of those sixteen hundred dollar and up monitors (for just 15"--sheesh) useless from a security standpoint.
Wearing polarizing sunglasses and tilting your head would be very conspicuous, to say the least. But polarizing contact lenses would work perfectly in this application. (This 'application' being the misappropriation of sensitive information.) It's not a trivial task to prepare them, but it's certainly not out of reach of a person of above average competence. If a person has naturally dark-coloured eyes, the added shading from the polarizers wouldn't even be apparent.
Need a quick and dirty solution? Look at the reflection of the monitor in a piece of plate glass. A blank acetate sheet will do in a pinch. Reflection off of a clear material will separate the two orthogonal polarization states of light if you adjust your viewing angle correctly. Sure, the information will be backwards, but if you're just feeling a bit nosy, it's no problem. And it doesn't look like you're looking at the screen in that case.
You want to protect sensitive information? Put it behind a wall.
Re:Taking it one step further... (Score:2)
Relatively recently, toric contact lenses have come on the market. They're designed for people with astigmatism, and to maintain lens orientation they're slightly weighted towards one edge.
And of course the polarization axis doesn't have to be bang on anyway to see something on one of these screens. If you'll settle for light gray rather than really black text, then you can have the polarization axis off by quite a bit.
Re:Taking it one step further... (Score:2)
Such sunglasses do exist, and are sold over-the-counter already. Light specularly reflected from water (or any medium with an index of refraction greater than air) will come back at least partially polarized. Sailors like to eliminate the glare off water for comfort; fishers like to be able to see the trout. In both cases, polarizing sunglasses are a simple solution.
Unfortunately, by their nature, linear polarizers are always going to look 'dark' under normal illumination, because by default they automatically soak up 1/2 of the unpolarized light that passes through them. So they wouldn't be nearly so inconspicuous as polarizing contact lenses.
Unfortunately, I think that polarised contacts would make you ill... I don't wear contacts, but I imagine that they rotate on your eyes when worn. This would make the angle of polarisation different for each eye--you would see different stuff in your left eye than in your right, and our brains don't like that a whole lot.
Believe it or not, it's actually pretty amazing what they eye can get used to. My mother knows people who have eyesight bad enough to require bifocals, but their vanity demands contact lenses. The solution? Lens for left eye is calibrated for close work; right lens is focused for distance vision. The brain 'learns' how to deal with the arrangement in a few days, and thereafter can handle the switch between 'mismatch' contact lenses and bifocals very rapidly. Some people do get headaches with the odd lens pairing, but apparently most people don't have any trouble.
Also, seeing a different linear polarization in each eye shouldn't bother you at all. Some techniques for displaying colour 3D movies rely on viewers wearing a polarizer over each eye--one polarizer's pass axis is perpendicular to the other. The camera projects the image for (say) your left eye vertically polarized, and the image for the right horizontally polarized.
Re:Taking it one step further... (Score:2)
Gas permeable lenses (aka hard contacts), as well as some of the newer toric (?) lenses for astigmatism don't rotate in the eye. Though the hard contacts are uncomfortable, and the torics are pricey....
Re:Taking it one step further... (Score:2)
> some of the newer toric (?) lenses for astigmatism
> don't rotate in the eye. Though the hard contacts are
> uncomfortable, and the torics are pricey...
The toric lenses would work. I have them for astigmatism in my right eye, though I don't have to have them for the left. So I buy a box of toric and a box of regular. There's about a $10 difference in price, so it's not too expensive.
The problem with toric lenses is it takes about 30 minutes for them to "settle" after you put them in (they have to rotate to the regular position and then want to be that way until you take them out). So things look kind of blurry for the first few minutes until the lenses rotate to the right angle.
So if you had polarized contact lenses to you with your computer, you have a ready-made excuse for goofing off the first 30 minutes you're at work. Then make it a habit to rub your eyes, pretend the lens fell out, and give yourself another 30 minutes!
Re:Taking it one step further... (Score:2)
And this is new how? (Score:2)
I remember IBM selling Thinkpads (amongst other manufacturers) with such screens back around 1995 or so. One of the suggested purposes was for using the computer on a plane, so that people behind you wouldn't be able to see what you're looking at. However, anyone who really needs to spy on someone using one of these computers would only have to go to a camera shoppe and buy a telephoto lens with a polarising filter.
Possibly could be used for 3D displays (Score:1)
Or even cooler, if they couldoverlay a non polorized image, you could have subtitles or annotations on a image, if you put on the proper glasses.
I seem to recall... (Score:1)
That's why I only talk to my computer with the numlock light and the spacebar. Morse code all the way, man!
Re: (Score:2)
Camera filter (Score:2)
Most people with expensive camera equipment add a polarizing filter to their glassware in order to protect the lens. The filter will kill some nasty reflections and improve colors, and is much cheaper to replace than the actual unprotected lens should it become scratched.
Security (Score:2, Insightful)
Now you have to find a way so that your data can't show up on a normal monitor and you've got an effective defence, Aganst at least the low end script kiddie type hacker that has trouble affording pricy hardware upgrades.
wow AMAZING!!!!! Brand New! (Score:2)
Really old tech... and as secure as a wet paper bag.
Laptop security screens (Score:1)
I mean, who works in highly sensitive areas *AND* needs to hide the data on the screen that badly?
And if you truly do need "for your eyes only", what about some sort of HMD (Head Mounted Display)?
(Anyone remember those PC Private Eye devices? They used an oscillating mirror and an LED array to "paint" a text screen in the users field of vision.)
-psyco
Heh (Score:1, Redundant)
Of course, to others it'll look like you're enjoying Planning_Budget_2002.xls a little too much ...
Re:Heh (Score:2)
Duh . . . (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder if he has a patent on this idea. Wouldn't it just be better to have people in, I dunno, offices? You could control entry via special security signatures know as "keys," which would be small metal devices small enough to fit into your hand. Access to data would be protected by an "opaque shielding device" called a wall.
I'll take my consulting check now, please.
Re:Duh . . . (Score:2)
Effective ? Nah (Score:4, Informative)
Second, how many different polarizations are there ? Last time I studied optics, one pair of glasses will work on any of these monitors (maybe needing some rotation/tilting). Unless you can assure polarizing glasses will always be bright red so you recognize "people with bright red glasses coming near my computer", and you can't assure that - it's quite easy to make polarizing lenses - the protection is senseless.
I can hardly wait until some company buys monitors and glasses to all their employees and then put several monitors in the same room, all people with polarizing glasses, making the whole buy futile. (Hmm, ok, will prevent the floor sweeper from reading your screen. Great.)
Re:Effective ? Nah (Score:2)
There are other hack attributes that should be centrally controlable like this, but xscreensaver has always wanted to maintain a very hands-off approach to the hacks.
Re:Effective ? Nah (Score:2)
Re:Effective ? Nah (Score:2)
Only one kind works. (Score:3, Informative)
There are more kinds, circular for example. It means the electric field is rotating, either clockwise or counterclockwise.
But that won't work for screens. The liquid crystal will ROTATE a LINEAR polarization but won't reverse a circular polarization. The screen starts with a light source, linear-polarizes it, selectively rotates the polarization, then linear-polarizes again. Depending on the amount of rotation you get more or less light.
This ancient hack consists of taking the final linear polarizer off the front of the screen and wearing it as a pair of glasses. The screen now emits a constant-brightness, varying-LINEAR-polarization light, which isn't translated into variable intensity until it hits the polarized glasses.
But that means that if you get the polarization right you get the image, if you're off by 90 degrees you get a negative image, and at other angles you get an image that has an intended-versus-perceived intensity graph something like a check-mark. Unless you happen to be at the angle where the letters and the background match exactly it's still readable, and if you're at exactly that wrong angle just tilt your head a LITTLE bit and they reappear.
So stock polarizing sunglasses read all these screens, no problem.
If you could come up with a final filter for the screen that converted, say, the vertical component of linearly-polarized light into right-circular and the horizontal into left-circular, you could then use circularly polarized glasses and defeat linearly-polarized. But I don't know of any physical mechanism (let alone one that could be turned into a cheap thin film) that would do this, even for monochrome, let alone the near-octave of light used by color displays or the full-octave for black-and-white.
Even if you DID come up with a circularly-polarized hack you'd only have TWO possibilities for the glasses - and viewing the display with the wrong one would just give you a negative, but readable, image.
Close but no cigar. (Score:2)
Nope - because you only get right-circular and left-circular when the polarization is 45-degrees to the quarter-wave plate's axis. Other angles produce eliptical polarization. So variable intensity (other than on vs. off) is out if you want security against cheap polaroid sunglasses (or viewing the screen in a glare surface).
Also you'll be stuck with a monochrome screen unless you can come up with three narrow-band incoherent colors and a plate that's a quarter-wave for all three.
There's a stronger way to do it (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like locking your house with a skeleton key.
Why not insert noisy frames between real ones and just synchronize the glasses so that they filter out the garbage frames? Why not just have the screen in the glasses?
Re:There's a stronger way to do it (Score:3, Funny)
Kind of how like ROT-13 decryptors are so common that there's no reason to send someone for jail for breaking the 31337 ROT-13 encryption on your valuable copyrighted digital content?
Give it up. Polarizing filters are now terrorist Weapons of Mass IP Destruction.
Re:There's a stronger way to do it (Score:2)
As others have pointed out, polarizing filters are so common that there's no security here.
It's not really about security.
It's like locking your house with a skeleton key.
Or like closing the door on your cube and not locking it. Sure, someone can open it, but if they do so it's noticible.
Why not insert noisy frames between real ones and just synchronize the glasses so that they filter out the garbage frames? Why not just have the screen in the glasses?
Expense.
Laptops on airplanes... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure whether the glasses required were vertically polarized of horizontally polarized. If they were vertically polarized, anyone with a pair of sunglasses could quite easily read the screen (but wouldn't you look odd wearing sunglasses on a plane while staring at a business person's apparently blank laptop screen).
On the other hand, if the required glasses were horizontally polarized, you'd have to rotate the sunglass lenses 90 degrees (which, since most sunglass lenses do not posess rotational symmetry, would mean you either would have a serious mod coming, or else you'd just have to tip your head 90 degrees... Actually, this might just work, but only if you were pretending to sleep and laying your head on the business person's shoulder, and that's likely to just make them upset.
Re:Laptops on airplanes... (Score:2)
They would modify your laptop for you in a couple of days and ship it back to you with the glasses. I was always a little weary of sending them a laptop to modify. I don't know what they would do if they broke it. The nice feature was that they would also include a polarizing screen that clipped to the front of the display in case you diddn't want to use the glasses.
I always wondered what happened to that company.
-pos
This may cover my eyes... (Score:1)
Try It At Home (Score:1)
Useless (Score:2)
er, what about.. (Score:2)
gouging the public, can we patent it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Um, put a polarizing filter on the monitor, add a simple 90 degress polarized light source to the front of the monitor (translucent sheet) put on your polarized glasses and you are set.
Sounds like bad security practices to me
Btw. The gentle fisher folks have been using polarized sunglasses for spotting trout for years
Re:gouging the public, can we patent it? (Score:2)
Um, put a polarizing filter on the monitor, add a simple 90 degress polarized light source to the front of the monitor (translucent sheet) put on your polarized glasses and you are set.
Simpler than that. Normal LCD monitors use liquid crystals between two polarizing filters. So this nifty new secure monitor is just a normal LCD monitor without the front polarizing filter. It's less monitor, for five times the cost.
Sounds like... (Score:2, Interesting)
In particular, if you have a 505tx, or similar laptop, download CCS (the c64 emulator) and play M.U.L.E. and try to find the mountains. There's a way to change color settings, but It's not high on my priority list, yet, to figure out.
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody can read it except fishermen (Score:2)
I suspect it would work, but it's just a hunch.
3-D? (Score:2)
Re:3-D? (Score:2)
Very old idea (Score:2)
The laptop computer had just gotten usable (sort of), and business users were taking work on the road. Normally the cube jungle and office walls are fine to protect data from prying eyes, but laptop screens were a real concern.
The solution was...a solution, which you wiped onto your laptop screen, intended to strip off the last polarizing layer. This last layer is what made sense of the supertwist LCD displays. The kit came with a pair of polarized glasses to prevent anyone else from seeing your screen; to them, it looked like a blank white display. Of course they addressed the issue of normal polarized sunglasses allowing circumvention...their glasses needed to be polarized at right angles to normal sunglass polarization. Of course this doesn't keep people with normal sunglasses from simply rotating the glasses, or their head, 90 degrees.
I never saw the point. Once enough people have the glasses, it's just like having an open display again, except less convenient to use.
There's a reason it never took off in the years since it was first invented.
Wow... now this is secure ;) (Score:2)
Price of the monitors: between $1600 and $2500.
Price of polarizing glasses: $15.
Everybody rotfl: priceless !
Re:Wow... now this is secure ;) (Score:2)
The other option is to scramble a monochrome screen with a red or green or blue filter.
If the filter is red then all red, white, yellow, tan, etc... pixels will be white and all other shades will be pushed to black. The classic trick is to scramble the colorspace of the pixels randomly so other viewers see multicolored static unless they have one of the color filters.
Now another option is to sync the static with special glasses, but if you have that then why muck with the monitor signal? Now one other option is to create a multi-polarized (simplest tech is to take two polarized sheets, go scissor-happy and glue to a clear plastic sheet in the many random orientations that would occur) pair of glasses. Then sync the polarization to the unique glasses, but the viewer has to maintain an exact close distance & have very little head movement.
Another variation of the concept is to do the same thing with the pure color filters and cut & glue the pieces into a stained-glass unique viewer which matches the color-space scrambling of the monitor. Again the same limitations of viewing distance & head motion come into play. However, the glasses will look a damn spot more stylish.
Is each screen specific to a pair of glasses? (Score:2)
From a banker's perspective... (Score:4, Insightful)
Privacy is big in banking. Bigger than big. There is nothing more important that people's money, and there are enough federal guidelines and regulations on the subject to choke a horse. People can argue about the importance of their kids, cars, and homes, but if a bank employee makes a mistake and suddenly your financial information is stolen or made public, you've got one hell of a lawsuit, and one severely ill person on your hands.
While the technology does seem a bit silly in its inception, and beating this security measure is a moderately difficult at best, what security guard or bank personnel is not going to notice the strange looking individual with 3-D glasses on and a terrible case of tilting-head looking over the shoulder of a CSR or teller.
Of course it's beatable, and of course it's not going to make sense in your average office environment. But I'll tell you right now that there is nothing better than this, that I can think of, that has come along in terms of blocking people from looking over the shoulder of bank employees. Sure there are vertical-blind-like shadded screens, where the information is only viewable when looking directly at the monitor (and we employ those as well), but this again is foilable by a person's mere position. If the employee gets up for coffee, a smoke, whatever, the information the screen is still viewable by anyone with a direct line of sight.
This technology can prevent the average person from seeing what's on an employee's screen. The "average person" is about 95% of all bank customers. The "average person" won't really care how it works, won't want to know why it works, but I'll tell ya, the "average person" will feel a 100 times more confident in his/her financial institutions commitment to security and privacy when using this technology, even if it can be foiled by 3D-glasses or expensive shades.
When you combine this technology with the common sense of "closing all applications when leaving your desk," a financial instutition's employee's desk becomes 10 times safer than it was originally, and that's a big step. I'm certain that the larger financial institutions out there (Citibank, et al) would be glad to show off the new technology and tout about its security, even if it can be foiled by the strange looking man wearing $3 3D glasses.
Re:From a banker's perspective... (Score:2, Interesting)
If the person gets a cup of coffe it pretty damn better lock the screen. It's really sad to hear, that banking business not yet discovered the use of a screensaver/screenlock and sees a need to "close all applications" for a cigarette break.
Also often the "average customer" might have a legitimate interest in the data that's displayed (maybe because it's his own data about what he's discussing with a bank employee) and he will feel a bit silly if he has to put on those funny looking glasses first. Let alone walking into a bank where half the employees (all that are working with computers) wear the same kind of geeky looking glasses.
So let's conclude: This technology isn't secure against anyone who really wants the data from that screens, it only creates a false sense of security. At the same time it makes everyone in the bank (including the customers) look silly. Also there are already better ways to protect that information (screensavers, arranging displays such that customers normally can't see it, displays with a narrow viewing angle).
Maybe privacy is big in banking, but i think it's more important to avoid looking silly.
Re:From a banker's perspective... (Score:2)
Sure there is. You put the computer & the employee on the other side of the desk from the customer. This brings into play the non-x-ray effect, in that with the exception of Clark Kent, people can't see through the back of the monitor.
Re:From a banker's perspective... (Score:3, Interesting)
How does this "technology" find itself in a science magazine? When I was 10 years old I noticed that I could take the polarzing filter off of my school calculator's LCD screen, and make the numbers displayed invisible, unless viewed through the filter. As far as I know, most LCDs (like the ones on digital watches, etc.) can only be viewed if the polarizing filter is in place. This is not new technology. This is greedy people trying to sell something many people already have -- most just don't know they already have it. (Try it! Take apart any cheap digital watch or calculator -- it will have a polartization filter in front of the LCD that without which the numbers will be invisible!)
The absolutely most ill-conceived approach to security is any kind of system that merely provides a layer of obfuscation. Why? Because it creates a false sense of security. This is mere obfuscation and nothing more. If I walk in to your bank wearing my driving sunglasses will the security guards have me arrested? Probably not. I wouldn't stand out at all -- yet my completely normal sunglasses would crack this so-called "technology". This is not secure. Secure means that NO ONE has the technological nor financial means to break the security system -- not even governments.
Anyone can buy polarizing sunglasses very cheaply these days. I've seen pairs at the grocery store for about $12. Hell, you can even buy a polarzing filter for your camera for around $25. Anyone can view and take photographs of the information displayed on these screens with off-the-shelf products. I bet your bank's owners would be pretty damn upset if the new security system you recommended, and they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on, was foiled by a 10-year old with a $12 pair of glasses.
Re:From a banker's perspective... (Score:2)
Re:From a banker's perspective... (Score:2)
Don't trust banks much, but... that's their line.
Peril Sensitive? (Score:2)
Re:Peril Sensitive? (Score:2)
But SLIGHTLY polarized light is all around us... (Score:2)
I think it is VERY unlikely that the screen looks PERFECTLY blank all the time. I'll bet that, for example, in a laptop on an airplane, it would be easy to see that there was SOMETHING on the screen, and even to read it without glasses by close inspection.
So, I'm not completely sure I understand the practical point of this invention. It isn't going to make spies think that the screen is truly blank or truly turned off--if, indeed, the fact that someone is looking at the screen with special glasses was not a giveaway in itself. As a casual "privacy" device it probably works--a spy probably couldn't read it from three feet away, and staring at it from six inches away while rotating it to get the greatest amount of naturally polarized light would make the spy conspicuous. But various existing privacy devices that limit the usable angle of view would probably be just as effective.
On the other hand, if someone can develop a version of this that simulataneously display TWO DIFFERENT images with 90-degree-opposite polarization--the computer-display equivalent of a Polaroid "Vectograph"--it might be a useful form of 3D-with-glasses display.
MPAA Involvement? (Score:2)
this is so you won't get fired (Score:2)
Ditch the monitor keep the glasses (Score:2)
I'm sorry Mr Smith... (Score:2)
great excuse for non-working demos... (Score:3, Funny)
Oh oh (Score:2)
Stupid ! (Score:2)
Glasses Design. (Score:2)
Agent glasses (Score:2)
for extra safety... (Score:2)
Duh! (Score:2)
-- Roger.
Obligatory DRM conspiracy theory (Score:2)
Violators must be stopped!!! (Score:2)
People who already wear corrective glasses (Score:2)
No Big Deal (Score:2)
1) obtain, and take apart a $5 calculator.
2) look at the LCD - there's a little piece of polarizing plastic in front of it - hey!
3) when i take this out, i can't see the screen.
4) stick the little piece of polarizing plastic that was taped in front of the LCD, and tape it to my glasses instead.
5) apply for New Scientist Story, and claim we invented something unique, and get slashdotted.
duh!
j [earthlink.net]
3M's privay screen (Score:2)
This "invention" is silly. I can pick up a pair of polarized sunglasses for $8 at the local drug store.
where is Tokio? (Score:2)
The real use for this technology... (Score:2)
-JDF
Naturally... (Score:2)
Re:Are they... (Score:2)
The glasses were polarised, clear normally, and when they were required to go black the polarising sheet on the camera was rotated, making them appear black.
Yes, I have the DVD with the production notes. Yes, i read them all. Yes, I should be able to find a better use of my time, but I cant.
Re:It can be defeated by polarized/3d glasses. So (Score:2)
I'd love to see the evidence that proves that 98% of all intrusions are accidental.