Slashdot Log In
Researchers Sniff Keystrokes From Thin Air, Wires
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Mar 12, 2009 04:00 PM
from the making-a-tempest-of-themselves dept.
from the making-a-tempest-of-themselves dept.
narramissic writes "Two separate research teams have found that the electromagnetic radiation that is generated when a computer keyboard is tapped is actually pretty easy to capture and decode. Using an oscilloscope and an inexpensive wireless antenna, the Ecole Polytechnique team was able to pick up keystrokes from virtually any keyboard, including laptops — with 95 percent accuracy over a distance of up to 20 meters. Using similar techniques, Inverse Path researchers Andrea Barisani and Daniele Bianco picked out keyboard signals from keyboard ground cables. On PS/2 keyboards, 'the data cable is so close to the ground cable, the emanations from the data cable leak onto the ground cable, which acts as an antenna,' Barisani said. That ground wire passes through the PC and into the building's power wires, where the researchers can pick up the signals using a computer, an oscilloscope and about $500 worth of other equipment. Barisani and Bianco will present their findings at the CanSecWest hacking conference next week in Vancouver. The Ecole Polytechnique team has submitted their research for peer review and hopes to publish it very soon."
Related Stories
[+]
Laser Sniffing Captures Typed Keystrokes From 50-100 Feet 146 comments
Death Metal writes "Chief Security Engineer Andrea Barisani and hardware hacker Daniele Bianco used handmade laser microphone device and a photo diode to measure the vibrations, software for analyzing the spectrograms of frequencies from different keystrokes, as well as technology to apply the data to a dictionary to try to guess the words. They used a technique called dynamic time warping that's typically used for speech recognition applications, to measure the similarity of signals. Line-of-sight on the laptop is needed, but it works through a glass window, they said. Using an infrared laser would prevent a victim from knowing they were being spied on." (This is the same team that was able to pick up the electromagnetic signals emitted by PS/2 keyboards.)
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Guess what (Score:2, Funny)
Upgrade to USB. Try to sniff that.
Re:Guess what (Score:5, Insightful)
They could still do it through wireless. The keys emit a signal that can be picked up no matter what connection the keyboard has to the computer.
For all you paranoid conspiracy theorists out there that are busy shitting bricks, I will be developing a USB based jamming device that will saturate the area with dummy signals. Please send $100 via brown paper bag on doorstep courier.
Parent
Re:Guess what (Score:5, Funny)
Real data thieves don't even bother with a keystroke sniffer: they know the sound of each key, so they only have to hear your password being typed to know it.
Parent
Re:Guess what (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Oh great, now I have to sound-proof my Faraday Cage.
Re:Guess what (Score:5, Informative)
A surefire way to get around keyboard monitoring is not to use one. It is admittedly rather tedious, but if you have good cause to be concerned about security, you can use an on-screen keyboard. As far as I know, they can't obtain the necessary information by monitoring your mouse signals.
Martus [martus.org], a package aimed at human rights workers who need to keep their activities secret from hostile governments, includes an on-screen keyboard.
Parent
Re:Guess what (Score:5, Funny)
A surefire way to get around keyboard monitoring is not to use one. It is admittedly rather tedious, but if you have good cause to be concerned about security, you can use an on-screen keyboard.
Tempest.
In future ITSO announcements:
Your pass-group must contain one of each of the following:
Parent
Re:Guess what (Score:4, Interesting)
One second while I tune my antennas to your monitor frequency.
Parent
Re:Guess what (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Guess what (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
needs another tag (Score:4, Insightful)
This needs a Van Eck tag, for Stephenson's Cryptonomicon bit.
Re:needs another tag (Score:5, Informative)
From wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
"Van Eck phreaking is the process of eavesdropping on the contents of a CRT display by detecting its electromagnetic emissions".
Also worth checking: open-source Van Eck phreaking implementation [sourceforge.net].
Parent
Much ado about nothing? (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like a TEMPEST in a teapot to me.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like a TEMPEST in a teapot to me.
Sounds like a TEMPEST in a teapot to me.
Nothing you say? Here's the part where I tell you I knew what you typed before it posted.
Re:Much ado about nothing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, and wasn't there a declassified NSA thing about just this late last year?
Parent
Re:Much ado about nothing? -pretty much (Score:3, Interesting)
USN has been doing it for years so has the german MAD
remember security is an illusion
regards
John Jones
"TEMPEST: A Signal Problem" (Score:3, Informative)
You are correct. See
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/nsa-releases-se.html [wired.com]
for a summary and see
http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/cryptologic_spectrum/tempest.pdf [nsa.gov]
for the recently declassified document. The discovery of this problem is dated to 1943.
Re:Much ado about nothing? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
LOL, yeah (Score:5, Informative)
You beat me to it. DOD has had a whole system (TEMPEST) for classifying this kind of EM emissions from secured systems at least since the mid 1980's. Nothing new about it at all. I recall working for a particular defense contractor where we had an entire 'black area' of the plant that was TEMPEST rated. Independent filtered power, EMF shielding everywhere, etc. It was pretty expensive to set up too.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You could spend 2 billion dollars shielding something, or you could spend $144 an hour paying ~20 people minimum wage to sit on myspace, irc, and twitter all day and space them around your complex.
Re:LOL, yeah (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, the university I worked at did some government work and actually used a mechanically isolated power system. Basically they had a big motor (or several, actually) and it was directly connected to a generator (with a flywheel I think). This meant a totally independent power loop as inside the building, and the flywheel smoothed out any spikes. Obviously not highly efficient, but a good way to decouple for security and safety purposes.
Parent
Good news, tinfoil hat crowd! (Score:5, Funny)
Well, just in case... (Score:2, Funny)
I will have to type "I know you're eavesdropping" every few sentences.
http://xkcd.com/525/ [xkcd.com]
Fools.... (Score:2, Funny)
Two separate research teams have found that the the electromagnetic radiation that is generated when a computer keyboard is tapped is actually pretty easy to capture and decode.
...We at the NSA have known this for years.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't imagine this story being news to Hertz or Marconi.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Everybody has known this for years, except, it seems, the guys and girls at Polytechnique and their grant committee.
As a reminder (Score:5, Informative)
Publishing is one of the first steps in peer review.
Thank you.
Mouse (Score:5, Interesting)
This is exactly why I do all my typing with my mouse on an on-screen virtual keyboard. It's much faster too.
On a serious note, it is ironic that literally broadcasting a bluetooth signal over-the-air between a wireless keyboard and computer is apparently more secure than a hardwired keyboard.
Re:Mouse (Score:5, Insightful)
One might also note that the PS/2 port is electrically compatible with the old AT keyboard that debuted in 1984, on a system with a 6MHz 8086. Not exactly an era where the computational cost of encrypting local busses was even remotely sensible.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Bluetooth doesn't use WEP, does it? I thought WEP was only for wlans.
This is true... however the idea that the original WLAN encryption was stated to be "wired equivalent", and ended up actually being super weak... from this it kind of suggests that "wired equivalent" isn't a very strong transmission security in the first place.
The idea here is that only when transmissions are made explicitly for communication do many people even think about the security of those transmissions. I mean... who would think to encrypt keyboard input data from a wired keyboard to the computer?
thin air: the new menace (Score:5, Funny)
I couldn't help but think of drugs when I read the headline: Researchers sniffing lines of keystrokes, complaining about how thin the air has gotten since when they were young. By god, back then the electrons were so thick they had to use thick 8 gauge wiring to make anything work. Why, these days, the electrons have been used and re-used so much that we can use 24ga wiring for communications. Hey, are you gonna finish that line of qwertyuiop?
Re:thin air: the new menace (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
8 gauge wire (Score:4, Interesting)
By god, back then the electrons were so thick they had to use thick 8 gauge wiring to make anything work.
Some years ago I waked into a computer store to buy a hard drive. Along one of the walls was a series of glass displays containing a small selection of vintage computer equipment. One of the displays contained a gigantic object that looked like it would take two men to shift. It consisted of a really massive looking cast metal casing out of which protruded some disks, arms, some clumsy looking circuit boards and the thing was powered by a quite sizeable 220 volt electric motor of the type one is used to seeing attached to a really big fat lumber saw. I had to take a few steps back before I realised the thing was a (8 GB as it turned out) hard drive from the early 80s and not a piece of industrial machinery with it's panelling removed. I walked out of that place with a 20 Gb hard drive in my hand. Kind of makes one marvel over how far we have come in terms of miniaturisation.
Parent
Will they be allowed to present their stuff? (Score:2, Interesting)
I doubt these folks will be allowed to present their stuff. As a lay man, I cannot see a genuine use of this technology without breaking the law. I hope they will present.
When a product based on this technology is manufactured, the manufacturer could face a law suit on these grounds:
The defendant manufactured a product which on usage as intended by manufacturer, breaks the law. That's tough.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's significant legal use for keyboard sniffing. Parents watching children and employers watching employees on company computers are both legal in the US.
As with ALL security research (Score:4, Insightful)
As a lay man, I cannot see a genuine use of this technology without breaking the law.
As with ALL security research there's ALWAYS one legal use: Using the info and techniques to find ways to defend yourself against bad guys who use the techniques against you and to test that your defenses are adequate.
Parent
Re:As with ALL security research (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How thin is the air, up there where you're at, that you somehow believe that they wouldn't be allowed to present? Why is that "tough"
Since when does the Canadian government ask whether there is a "genuine use of [a] technology without breaking the law" before they pre-emptively restrict free speech? I'm pretty sure that they don't--go wikipedia it, yourself, and come back and tell me if I'm wrong, OK?
So where did you get this idea that somebody could stop their presentation/publishing?
* You may be
Van Eck phreaking? (Score:5, Interesting)
Phreaking (Score:4, Informative)
Nifty wiki links:
Van Eck Phreaking [wikipedia.org]
TEMPEST [wikipedia.org]
Rainbow series [wikipedia.org]
The solution is obvious... (Score:3, Funny)
Change to Bluetooth. That'll fix 'em, by gum! Harrr! Can't fool ME that easily!
Wait... Oh, nevermind. The only solution is to shoot people with antennae. Damned criminals...
No, wait... No, wait... No, wait...
Hmm. This is interesting. Get back to you.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
.....The only solution is to shoot people with antennae....
The solution is to allow nobody anywhere at anytime to have any secrets of any kind whatsoever. Jesus Christ speaks of the time in the future of the world when all secrets will be known by everyone.
Jesus Christ said in Luke 12:2 -- For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, nor anything hidden that shall not be known. 3 Therefore whatever you have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light. And that which you have spoken in the ear
Re:The solution is obvious... (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes, eg. bidding/negotiations some form of "evil plans"? Such methods certainly require secrecy on the part of BOTH parties.
Parent
I knew this day would come (Score:5, Funny)
I knew it. Many others have been discussing the potentials for this type of eavesdropping for many years. Ha! and they laughed at me when I started protecting [businessol.com] my stuff...
This is not news (Score:3, Informative)
Google "Tempest." Some of this has been released, some not, but this is decades old.
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
FUD (Score:5, Funny)
This is a plot by GUI users to spread fear uncertainty and doubt upon cli applications. May CLI live forever!
Welcome to the 60s (Score:3, Insightful)
Look up "TEMPEST", e.g. in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEMPEST [wikipedia.org] - this isn't merely "old news", this is "so ancient it dates before I was born", and I am old enough to have used punch cards.
This is why some computer rooms will never contain wireless peripherals or wireless networks or Internet connections; but will have an intimidating sign on the door, and combined biometric/keypad entry, and Faraday cages built into their walls, and a self destruct mechanism, and fences around them, and 24/7 armed guards, and a hot line to a fast-response team on a separate near-by base.
For everyone else, well, when you buy tinfoil rolls, remember to buy enough for your hat _and_ your peripherals cables :-)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
[Military anecdote] So I'm quite baffled by this "research" being presented well over 30 years after that.
It can take decades for things to get declassified.