Re: Shoulder surfing for passwords by ear
On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 02:21:31PM -0400, Jack Lloyd wrote: I wonder if my Model M keyboards (which have individual electrical/mechanical Heh. Another http://modelm.org fan. But, given the Bluetooth alternatives or http://www.securityfocus.com/news/241 acoustic attack in the privacy of your home should be the least of your worries. switches under each key) are vulnerable to this attack. It is pretty noisy, I can imagine that the noise of each key's switch is sufficiently different (due to wear, etc) that it would still work with modifications. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Shoulder surfing for passwords by ear
Hmmm, sounds like we now need keystroke sound jammers. Shouldn't be too hard to implement if you have a good random noise generator, but it could get annoying if you play white/pink noise while a password prompt pops up. Of course, there's still the issue of the pinhole camera in the ceiling tiles aimed at your keyboard, but that's old hat. :) I wonder if different users hit the keys in a different enough way to make any difference... http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid14_gci963348,00.html 'Whispering keyboards' could be next attack trend By Niall McKay, Contributing Writer 11 May 2004 | SearchSecurity.com OAKLAND -- Listen to this: Eavesdroppers can decipher what is typed by simply listening to the sound of a keystroke, according to a scientist at this week's IEEE Symposium of Security and Privacy in Oakland, Calif. Each key on computer keyboards, telephones and even ATM machines makes a unique sound as each key is depressed and released, according to a paper entitled Keyboard Acoustic Emanations presented Monday by IBM research scientist Dmitri Asonov. All that is needed is about $200 worth of microphones and sound processing and PC neural networking software. Today's keyboard, telephone keypads, ATM machines and even door locks have a rubber membrane underneath the keys. This membrane acts like a drum, and each key hits the drum in a different location and produces a unique frequency or sound that the neural networking software can decipher, said Asonov. SNIP
Re: Shoulder surfing for passwords by ear
On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 09:32:40AM -0400, Sunder wrote: http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid14_gci963348,00.html 'Whispering keyboards' could be next attack trend By Niall McKay, Contributing Writer 11 May 2004 | SearchSecurity.com OAKLAND -- Listen to this: Eavesdroppers can decipher what is typed by simply listening to the sound of a keystroke, according to a scientist at this week's IEEE Symposium of Security and Privacy in Oakland, Calif. [...] Today's keyboard, telephone keypads, ATM machines and even door locks have a rubber membrane underneath the keys. This membrane acts like a drum, and each key hits the drum in a different location and produces a unique frequency or sound that the neural networking software can decipher, said Asonov. I wonder if my Model M keyboards (which have individual electrical/mechanical switches under each key) are vulnerable to this attack. It is pretty noisy, I can imagine that the noise of each key's switch is sufficiently different (due to wear, etc) that it would still work with modifications. -J
