Paint Provides Network Protection

thefickler writes "Forget WEP and WPA; I'm switching over to the EM-SEC Coating System, a recently announced paint developed by EM-SEC Technologies that acts as an electromagnetic fortress, allowing a wireless network to be contained within painted walls without fear of someone tapping in or hacking wireless networks. The EM-SEC Coating System is clearly the most secure option aside from stringing out the CAT5, and can be safely used to protect wireless networks in business and government facilities."

Not a security solution!

[rjforster]

The concept of this product is neat. With careful design you should be able to prevent much of the signal from an access point going beyond a certain area, thus allowing you to put more APs on the same channel closer together within the building than before. The number of users that can sensibly use one AP will be the same but the number of users per m^2 that can use APs(plural) will be much higher. Bandwidth still won't get close to Ethernet but that shouldn't be the issue as the few people who really need bandwidth in a corporate environment should still be wired.

As before, proper authentication and confidentiality is the route to a secure wireless network,

What about EMP?

[Quinn_Inuit]

I wonder if this paint would block an EMP? I didn't see anything about it in TFA, but that would be a neat side effect.

Coatings are Becoming More Popular

[emilyridesabmx]

I work in a pretty specialized architecture firm, and some of our clients are slightly paranoid to say the least (Ting foil hats? More like Tin Foil Ceremonial Headpieces...) and we are working on a project that has a room that is set up to ward off an EMP during the coming apocalypse. I'm not kidding. The 'Safe Room' in this building is totally shielded, you can't get any type of electronic signal in or out. Coatings like the paint mentioned in the article are becoming more and more and common,and I think we're going to see a lot more multi-use coatings like this in the future. At the moment, they are extremely expensive, but as the price drops, this will become a pretty standards feature in a lot of new constructions where buildings are put up in close proximity to each other and interference tends to be a big problem. Conversely, you can always just get a few rolls of Reynolds Wrap and poster your walls with that.

Re:Really funny

[Dunbal]

Imagine any business trying to explain why phones stop working when inside the building...

      For certain businesses (restaurants, cinemas, hospitals) that might actually be a GOOD thing...

Re:Blocking EM eh...

[Oriumpor]

There are coated double pane glass windows work pretty well at blocking EM if I recall correctly.

Even one wall/side it works (or stops ppl working)

[laurensv]

When 14 or so people were to be moved to adjacent building, it was my job (ITmanager) to make sure they had all there network services.
So I asked for wires to every room and one wireless spot in the middle, the DECT repeater in the hallway not far off was enough to get good reception in every room.
A week before they change places I checkt the new cables, new fiber to the spot, the wireless, it all works.
The day they move, I get scrambled calls about the wireless not working properly and the phones even worse.
What happened? The last day the creative head decided everybody needed one or more magneticly painted walls so they can hang work/memos/etc without having leaving little holes in the wall everytime.
So I needed a new DECTrepeater (and new cables from the PABX, which would have cost a little extra when the fiber was laid in place; but now costs as much for the work) and even now 3 rooms down the phone service isn't great, wireless in those rooms sucks.

Re:Tag: Snakeoil

[karnal]

I thought about this as well; however, if you think about it - this paint could really help in certain areas.

Let's say you have a need for wireless in a data center. Most data centers I've been to have 0 windows - windows just aren't energy efficient enough to have in a data center; in addition, if someone wanted in from the outside, they'd just smash a window. Those servers would start to look like gold to a thief.....

Anyways, any secured area that you might want a specific network on wireless could have 0 (or faraday caged) windows within the room. I'm sure if it's a wireless security issue, this paint can be a huge help. It probably wouldn't help much on your house, for example.

Re:Tag: Snakeoil

[Fizzl]

Actually I can think of a use for itmyself, too. The way we are testing wireless forensics or mobile viruses is to set up and actual real life environment. No emulation, but real hardware itself. At the moment this calls for renting of an underground military machine shed/hangar which is naturally signal shielded by helluva lot of rock/soil on it. It would be lot more efficient just to have a test lab which is painted with this.
And ofcourse building a faraday cage would be just as efficient, but it's always cool to rent underground military premises :P

Wave Guides

[hhawk]

A bit off topic, but a friend just set up his new MRI scanner and of course the room it is in is well shielded. You need to keep its magnetic waves in the room and you don't want anything interfering with the machine. However, so they can do functional MRI, they need to project video into the machine (e.g., you can watch a video while getting scanned).

Since the video projector can't be in the room... they created a wave guide which is a metal tube of a size (width and length) that doesn't allow anything harmful in or out of the room (electro-magnetically speaking) but is effectively a literal hole in the wall that they can project through. In some studies about taste they can also run long tubes filled with "flavors" so that they can allow a person in the scanner to "taste" while being scanned.

Re:Coatings are Becoming More Popular

[customizedmischief]

I have a paranoid client who would use a product like this in the real world as well. Their house was constructed with gypsum panels with aluminum backed paper. All of the custom cabinetry is steel. The windows are something special too. The place is cool as hell. No, I can't get a cellphone signal in there. The place was designed to keep the radio waves out, not in, but it works both ways. I wouldn't put that place up against a determined nsa van, but it is really impressive what the gets blocked. As far as I know, none of those panels are intentionally bonded to ground, so it could be a lot better.

This place has a "safe room" too, but it's just the place where they put new plastic products coming into the house for a month or two to let them outgas most of their VOCs. I get my chuckles about it, and I'm not allowed to go there if I put on deodorant that day, but I have to admit that the air quality in there is superb. Placebo or not, I always feel better after working there for a day.

Re:Blocking EM eh...

[t00le]

Isn't it illegal to block wireless frequencies in any private or public place? I recall an old story about a church attempting to do the same thing, but with a different technology. Maybe I am not remembering it correctly, but it is illegal to block pager/cell frequencies as per the FCC. Private spaces I can see them not enforcing the law, however if your office is next to a public building wouldn't this potentially interfere with the pager/wireless frequencies?

Imagine sharing a wall with a doctor and you enclose your space. The doctor next door uses a pager service that has a tower on your side of the building, but he is unable to get a signal. Wouldn't that make you liable for blocking out frequencies if the doctor can prove that you are blocking public frequencies??

Re:Typical attempt to get government to spend oodl

[modecx]

Hey, maybe they should paint theaters with this stuff...

Fuck that, I'm all for painting cars belonging to people caught using cellphones while driving with this crap. I mean, windows and everything. Maybe we could arrange a dunking vat, you know, for quick, easy and thorough radio-wave proofing.

Re:Typical attempt to get government to spend oodl

[Doddman]

I'm sure schools would pick this up very quickly if it blocked cell phone signal. I can almost factually say that my school would.

My windows blocked radio waves

[pestie]

I lived in an apartment at one point which didn't allow my DirecTV dish, but one of my windows had a clear view of the southern sky. OK, I decided, I'll just set the dish here on the floor and point it out the window! Well, that didn't work. At first it was the metal screen blocking the signal, but the apartment complex manager was nice enough to have it replaced with a non-conductive fiberglass screen when I asked. But it still didn't work. With the window open so the dish was only looking through the screen, everything was fine. Close the window, though, and my signal dropped to zero. Signals at those frequencies are known to pass through ordinary glass, so I'm guessing that the windows were coated with some type of glazing, possibly metal-based, that blocked the signal. Heat was included in the rent at this place, so the apartment complex had a direct interest in energy efficiency.

My solution was to build a double-paned window out of two sheets of clear acrylic separated with spacers and insulated all the way around with foam tape. I cut it to fit the open window perfectly and unless you looked very carefully, you'd never notice that the "real" window was wide open and the "fake" window was filling the space. It was well-insulated enough even in the winter that the heat loss was no problem. But the important thing was that the satellite signals passed through the acrylic with no problem, and I was probably the only person in the whole complex to have satellite TV. Plus, I earned geek points for having a working satellite dish on my living room floor. Yes, I was single at the time; why do you ask? Heh...

That stuff is THICK.

[Kadin2048]

Waaaait a minute here.

Did you say six mils ? I think people aren't understanding how thick that is. That is one whoppingly heavy coat of paint.

That's not really "paint," that's more like a sprayed-on or rolled-on coating. Just to compare, that's like seven layers of household (0.02mm) aluminum foil.

Now, maybe it's still easier to put up than gluing sheets of a solid material in place, but the quantity of this stuff that's going to be required to coat a large space is going to be enormous. And unless it has some sort of quick-drying solvent base, it must have to be sprayed in multiple coats, particularly onto ceilings, just to keep from dripping.

I could see a lot of problems in using this stuff in anything but secure areas; it's not just a drop-in replacement for current, conventional house or office wall paint.