The users of tablet PCs are rapidly spreading, and accordingly there are many scenes browsing and inputting personal information in public places with third persons in addition to private places. Unlike the conventional mobile phones and notebook PCs equipped with distinct input devices (e.g., keyboard), tablet PCs have touch-screen keyboards for data input. Such integration of display and input device increases the damage when the display is stolen by malicious attackers. This paper presents a new threat of stealing tablet PC dis-plays via electromagnetic (EM) emanation. In the conventional studies, such EM display stealing has been conducted with non-transportable setups. The studies also assumed that a large amount of times was available in advance to obtain electrical parameters specified for a target display. In contrast, this paper demonstrates that such EM display stealing is feasible in real time by a setup portable in an attache case. The EM display stealing does not require the conventional parameter tunings due to the prior profiling and the real-time signal processing. The attack distance of 2 m can be a practical threat to the general tablet PCs in public places. This paper discusses possible attack scenarios based on the above setup. In addition, we de-scribe a mechanism of EM emanation from tablet PCs and a countermeasure against such EM display stealing.
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