[117900] in Cypherpunks
RE:
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Trei, Peter)
Tue Sep 14 14:36:01 1999
Message-ID: <D104150098E6D111B7830000F8D90AE8E62A60@exna02.securitydynamics.com>
From: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei@rsasecurity.com>
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net, "'Steve Schear'" <schear@lvcm.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 14:20:37 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
Reply-To: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei@rsasecurity.com>
Steve Schear[SMTP:schear@lvcm.com] wrote:
>At 10:46 AM 9/14/99 +0200, you wrote:
>>At 06:50 PM 9/13/99 -0700, Steve Schear wrote:
>>>Just the sort of device to position on your front lawn in a large
wooden
>>>planter for chamoflage. Set it to a 24-hour timer and use a radio
shack
>>>sound level meter and a infrared spot light/photocell as the
trigger. When
>>>those jerks cruise by a 2:00 am with their windows down and 500 W
stereo
>>>blasting you can smile as their cars sudden quiet and coast to a
stop some
>>>distance away. After they flatten their batteries from cranking,
you might
>>>even hear them cursing and kicking their tires and trying to
figure out why
>>>their cellulars also quit so they can't call a tow truck ;-)
>>
>>Yup. Or when the neighbor's dog starts barking, you HERF out
their TV,
>>and they come and kick your ass.
>
>Hence the need for the photo cell in addition to the noise level as
a
>trigger. Perhaps the EMP could be directed by a conductive path
formed to
>the target, so as not to severely affect other equipment. Might an
>inexpensive Nitrogen UV laser do the trick?
>
>--Steve
I think this is a non-starter.
Any laser powerful enough to ionize the air and form a conductive
path
* is not inexpensive.
* takes *lots* of power.
* is not stealthy - a line of ionized air at atmospheric
pressure
resembles a lightning bolt.
* has much more direct ways of disabling a target than just
acting
as an EMP conduit.
* probably prevents the HERF stuff from working - you basically
are
connecting a wire from from your spark gap to the car body,
and
pumping power through it. Metal body cars can shrug off full
lightning strikes and keep going. The HERF stuff works by
inducing
voltages on wires *inside* the car, and so needs a delivery
mode
which gets it around corners and bouncing around inside the
car body.
If you go to the ham radio newsgroups, you'll find plenty of
anecdotal stories about high powered (albeit legal) ham mobile
units causing cars to stall.
Peter Trei
ptrei@rsasecurity.com
