Researchers Sniff Keystrokes From Thin Air, Wires 217
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."
As a reminder (Score:5, Informative)
Publishing is one of the first steps in peer review.
Thank you.
Phreaking (Score:4, Informative)
Nifty wiki links:
Van Eck Phreaking [wikipedia.org]
TEMPEST [wikipedia.org]
Rainbow series [wikipedia.org]
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.
Re:Guess what (Score:5, Informative)
This is not news (Score:3, Informative)
Google "Tempest." Some of this has been released, some not, but this is decades old.
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.
Re:Much ado about nothing? (Score:5, Informative)
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].
"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.