Stealing Data Via Electrical Outlet 208
Ponca City, We love you writes "NetworkWorld reports that security consultants Andrea Barisani and Daniele Bianco are preparing to unveil their methodology at the Black Hat USA conference for stealing information typed on a computer keyboard using nothing more than the power outlet to which the computer is connected. When you type on a standard computer keyboard, electrical signals run through the cable to the PC. Those cables aren't shielded, so the signal leaks via the ground wire in the cable and into the ground wire on the computer's power supply. The attacker connects a probe to a nearby power socket, detects the ground leakage, and converts the signal back into alphanumeric characters. So far, the attack has proven successful using outlets up to about 15 meters away. The cost of the equipment to carry out the power-line attack could be as little as $500 and while the researchers admit their hacking tools are rudimentary, they believe they could be improved upon with a little time, effort and backing. 'If our small research was able to accomplish acceptable results in a brief development time (approximately a week of work) and with cheap hardware,' they say, 'Consider what a dedicated team or government agency can accomplish with more expensive equipment and effort.'"
usb keyboard? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:usb keyboard? (Score:4, Funny)
random noise generator? (Score:5, Interesting)
even usb uses a GND and the D+/D- (data wires) aren't isolated from the GND.
Plus most GND is typically a common ground (through the chassis and to the ground of the power cable).
and if you consider the fact that this was done by unfunded, tiny group in just a week....makes ya wonder what the NSA or any other BIGGER and better funded group would have up their sleeves.
looks like I have to come up with a random noise generator to hook up to the ground of my power outlets.
Re:random noise generator? (Score:5, Funny)
looks like I have to come up with a random noise generator to hook up to the ground of my power outlets.
Too much work. Just do what I do -- don't ever type anything worth reading.
Re:random noise generator? (Score:5, Funny)
or hook up an old ipod running death metal to the gnd
Re:random noise generator? (Score:5, Funny)
That would be anything but random. You need white noise.
...and a sense of humor.
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Err ... and what is "death metal" if not "white noise"?
Re:random noise generator? (Score:5, Funny)
Too much work. Just do what I do -- don't ever type anything worth reading.
I am posting at Slashdot - kinda like preaching to the converted, isn't it?
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Or do what I do, and always type stuff that will make eyes bleed when read.
Oh, BTW: Hairy blood dripping decomposing donkey sacks with sphincter spread.
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looks like I have to come up with a random noise generator to hook up to the ground of my power outlets.
Vacuum cleaner? Microwave? Air conditioning?
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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We musicians have our tricks and devices to get rid of power-line disturbances. I recommend looking for such a device in a big store for musicians and a guide on the net.
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Newton's law? (Score:2)
Many 'net junkies like to say things like "Information wants to be free!" as if there was something anthropic about information.
But information is the foundation of the Universe, so much so that quantum mechanics is routinely described with terms like "information loss" and even measured. It's almost like Douglas Adams was right all along, and the universe actually is a large supercomputer trying to find out the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Where are the hyper-intelligent mice?
But if the un
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In this case, there is an easier way, and it's called optical links, which don't radiate RF when you send photons through them.
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I'll have to read this article , because i'm somehow about this.
Normally , a power supply contains a rectifier , so this should mean the signal can't be carried back.
I'll have to do some tests on this.
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Normally , a power supply contains a rectifier , so this should mean the signal can't be carried back.
Current going into a diode will tell you the impedance coming out of the diode.
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Basicaly what happens is the keyboard induces current in the ground line
so the answer is to filter out the 1-20KHz range to reduce the level of ground loop feedback and insert some pink noise at the 1-20Hz range into the ground to further bury the signal into the noise.
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"looks like I have to come up with a random noise generator to hook up to the ground of my power outlets."
There would already be a lot of noise in the signal which they must be able to filter already. You'd probably be better off connecting something that mimicked a series of keyboards with keystrokes that were plausible. This would not be random at all, and your keyboard would then be one keyboard hiding among many keyboards, rather than a single keyboard hiding within (approximately white) noise -- which
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Similar to a looping/distortion pedal for a guitar/instrument.
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With wireless, on the other hand, trivial eavesdropping is a basic assumption. This doesn't mean that designers won't fuck it up(Hello, WEP); but the matter is at least considered.
There's probably some grumbling going on (Score:2)
There are probably some NSA designers out there reminding everyone that it was inevitable someone would figure it out and luckily they still had 500 more ways to get the same data.
Years ago at Hanford they were doing some experiments monitoring the power going into a house. Discovered they could tell exactly what was going on in every room at any given moment just by watching minor fluctuations in t
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Re:random noise generator? (Score:4, Informative)
even usb uses a GND and the D+/D- (data wires) aren't isolated from the GND.
Plus most GND is typically a common ground (through the chassis and to the ground of the power cable).
and if you consider the fact that this was done by unfunded, tiny group in just a week....makes ya wonder what the NSA or any other BIGGER and better funded group would have up their sleeves.
looks like I have to come up with a random noise generator to hook up to the ground of my power outlets.
Now you know why the NSA and the other spooky types keep their classified equipment running off a generator powered by an electrical motor rather than connecting directly to the power grid. When you absolutely have to keep something secret nothing beats Faraday cages, air-gaps and mechanical isolation from the power grid.
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The D+/D- wires are differential, in which the signal is coupled, and so it will radiate and affect the ground current much less - probably by 2+ orders of magnitude, compared to single-ended signals.
Root is like crack (Score:4, Funny)
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I even had sex with my girlfriend as root.
Kind of appropriate! [urbandictionary.com]
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What about wireless USB keyboards, we all know that they're safe because radio waves are not receivable by anyone else are they..!?
I bet the security story would be used by the likes of Intel and Microsoft to justify the (un)Trusted Computing platform wet deam of theirs.
Re:usb keyboard? (Score:5, Funny)
another approach is to use wireless keyboards.
No ground fault attack is possible since I'm using batteries!
I've been fighting the man for so long I've got a million tricks like this up my sleeve.
Of course, that's not safe either. (Score:3, Insightful)
While I'm sure you were jesting (though someone is liable to believe you!), wireless keyboards aren't [hackaday.com] safe either [zdnet.com].
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And what do you think happens on the receiver connected to the computer's USB, that's different from what a wired keyboard does?
Re:usb keyboard? (Score:4, Informative)
A USB keyboard will still do a slow scan of row and column and the resistance will go up per keypress and that is what they are looking at. If you can identify the scan frequency, then you can look for current changes at the right times and reconstruct the matrix of key presses. Since most PCs use the same matrix, its trivial to convert the matrix with unknown start values into known start values once you find 0x39 (space bar) shifted some random way and frequently pressed.
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Naw, I recommend an AC motor connected to a generator via a short shaft linkage, perhaps some gearing to ensure it spins exactly at 3600 RPM in the US, and 3000 RPM in Europe (60hz and 50hz respectively). Yes, it wastes a good amount of power because it converts electricity to rotational movement and back again... but it is going to be difficult for one side to figure out what the other side is doing. Especially if the secure side then has an online UPS with a decent array of deep cycle batteries.
For even
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A rotary converter. My dad used to have one of those - it was a beautifully made thing, all brass and varnished wood. Sadly it disappeared after he died. I wish i'd got hold of it.
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You can use that to drive light bulbs, but that is about it. Most equipment relies on the input being AC in order to transform it down to the voltage it needs. In order to make it work for any electronics more complicated than an old fashioned light bulb, you'd have to replace the power supply for each piece of equipment. It's much easier to just convert
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You really don't need to go that far. If you use a true sine wave UPS (where the incoming current charges the battery, and all power going to your devices is generated from the battery), I doubt you'll have lots of noise coming out of the line.
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I poked around a few designs this morning.
Most devices are not designed to surpress noise to ground. A typical surge protector relies on shunting part of the load to ground. In fact, most power conditions will not correct ground issues. (Think big voltage regulator).
An isolation transformer, useful for eliminating ground loops, will most likely keep you safe from power sniffing beasties. Usually, these units come with a ground noise suppression rating and this indicates the relative expected performance.
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Getting rid of the ground prong at the plug won't remove the circuit ground. The neutral prong is still ground in this sense. The ground prong is intended to be connected to the metal chassis, so that if a wire comes loose inside of an appliance and contacts the chassis, it will be shorted to ground instead of causing the chassis to go live.
The reason that there is an additional ground prong and the case isn't just connected to the neutral prong is that it's easier to mess up the wiring of line and neutra
Dupe? (Score:2, Informative)
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/12/2038213 [slashdot.org]
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Yes, looks like a dupe and the important bit of info is that only PS/2 keyboards are really vulnerable. USB cables are shielded better. Can anyone confirm TFA is the same case?
Worse than a duplicate: A degrade-licate. (Score:5, Informative)
Basically, if you have a keyboard of poor quality that has poor shielding and no noise reduction components, it is possible to read signals. The question is, which keyboards and computers are poorly designed and poorly shielded?
Read the complete story: This PDF, not referenced by Slashdot, tells the whole story: CanSecWest/core09 March 16-20, 2009 [cansecwest.com] (PDF). Quote from page 41: "This doesn't work against USB keyboards because of differential signaling". Also, on page 12: "The [PS/2 keyboard] wires are very close to each other and poorly shielded".
Slashdot articles of especially poor quality: Are they paid advertisements? I've read Slashdot articles for years, and there is now a new phenomenon. A publication runs an article of very poor quality and Slashdot links to it, possibly to lead Slashdot readers to the publication so that they will read the ads. This article was submitted to Slashdot by a professional writer, Hugh Pickens [hughpickens.com], who is possibly acting as a public relations agent. He has written at least 413 Slashdot articles [hughpickens.com]. Does someone at Slashdot accept money to publish his articles?
Quote from the OLDER article referenced by the OLDER Slashdot story:
'March 12, 2009, 02:46 PM - IDG News Service -
'Inverse Path researchers Andrea Barisani and Daniele Bianco say they get accurate results, picking out keyboard signals from keyboard ground cables.
'Their work only applies to older, PS/2 keyboards [PS/2 connector, not PlayStation], but the data they get is "pretty good," they say. On these 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. They believe they could pick up signals from a distance of up to 50 meters by simply plugging a keystroke-sniffing device into the power grid somewhere close to the PC they want to snoop on.
'Because PS/2 keyboards emanate radiation at a standard, very specific frequency, the researchers can pick up a keyboard's signal even on a crowded power grid. They tried out their experiment at a local university's physics department, and even with particle detectors, oscilloscopes and other computers on the network were still able to get good data.'
laser pointer (Score:3, Insightful)
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But most people have their webcams setup to face them, not the computer.
Done that (Score:5, Informative)
The SIGINT in the Netherlands did this kind of stuff well before the new millennium, including reading the screen (LCD or CRT) and audio by tapping into the ground or pointing a dish to the emitting circuit, one of the reasons why the whole building handling sensitive information must be encased, making it practically a faraday cage. Only disadvantage is that your cellphone doesn't work although the SIGINT saw that as an advantage.
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Well, when you get down to it, any outside communications that isn't through a secure line is a possible liability. You don't want someone waltzing in and sending out sensitive information on a phone call. Granted, if they're determined they'll get that information one way or another, but that's where SIGINT ends and HUMINT begins.
Re:Done that (Score:4, Interesting)
Hell if I remember correctly my old motherboard had a setting to add random noise so the memory chips couldn't be read from their emissions. So yeah, it's an old and well known problem.
Re:Done that (Score:4, Insightful)
Heard about this six years ago (Score:3, Interesting)
Old college roommate, former Air Force Intelligience type, one day decided to give me something to think about when I was trying to be more secure with my PC... "Don't you think when you push 'A' on your keyboard or push 'B' on your keyboard that something ever so slightly different happens in your power supply?"
It's very old news amongst SIGINT types...
UPS? USB? (Score:2)
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I doubt it will help. The ground on a UPS is a pass-through.
USB would at least make it harder.
tempest (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEMPEST [wikipedia.org] - the fact that these guidelines exist, means that this is in not new.
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Similar techniques are at least 40 years old. .. it's no big news . they are simply reproducing what's been known .. computers are easy to intercept because they radiate massive
One of the ways described in litterature makes use of the variation
in current in the ac line.Others were simply picking up the rf and used a
tv monitor with variable h and v frequencies to actually look at what was on the
monitor.
Still
for ages
amounts of RF.
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Not only not new, but the codeword Tempest was declassified in the 80s - not the standards, just the codeword. The Government has been doing this for a LONG time
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Sounds like a rotary UPS would achieve the same thing. I wonder about the Earth link though.
If 'they' really want to spy on you ... (Score:4, Insightful)
If the cops or feds really want to spy on you, you will have a hard time preventing it. My advice is not to attract their attention in the first place.
If you're someone like the mafia, you can't use electronic devices and you can't write anything down. Each of your clandestine conversations has to be in a different noisy location so they can't set up a directional microphone or bug. You also have to prevent them from getting a deaf person to lip read you. (I don't have direct experience with criminal gangs but anyone can observe that they usually aren't brought down by wiretaps. The big prosecutions of mafia bosses usually resulted from getting an underling to rat on his boss.) The point is that anyone worried about being spied on can and will take measures to prevent it.
Spying on someone is expensive. Spying on someone's key clicks is particularly expensive and probably won't produce great results. Someone tried an experiment of bugging an office by shining a laser on the window. The results were disappointing. The vast majority of the conversation was uninteresting. The experimenters decided that no useful information would have been gathered.
Tapping telephones and data links is relatively easy (compared with sniffing keystrokes). Stealing someone's laptop is usually also easy. Unless I'm taking measures against those kinds of spying, I'm not worried about having my keystrokes sniffed. If I were at danger of being spied on, I would be much more worried about being betrayed by a 'friend', associate, or employee.
Military has known about this for decades (Score:2)
And no, that's not idle speculation, it was one of the things we had to deal with when I was in the military.
It's even referred to by one of those silly military project names.
Sorry, I'm not sure if I can post the name, so I won't.
(If someone else posts it, correctly or otherwise, I will neither confirm nor deny it's accuracy, so please don't ask.)
It's Tempest, and it is not classified (Score:5, Informative)
Securing notebooks is of course much easier than securing PCs because the keyboard data doesn't go outside the system. The intro to the article appears confused. Any signal on the earth line has to be due to capacitative coupling between a keyboard and external ground owing to the well known law that the sum of all the currents in all circuit paths to any junction must be zero. If you want to improve security against ground line signalling when using a notebook, run it on battery using secured wireless networking, and use the built in keyboard and monitor.
Could accomplish? (Score:2)
, 'Consider what a dedicated team or government agency have already accomplished with more expensive equipment and effort.'"
FTFY.
Overrated (Score:2)
"stealing"? Please don't promote english abuse (Score:2)
you can't "steal" data.
you can compromise the data, hack it, crack it, breach the computer, etc, but its not theft.
Please don't promote this butchery of the english language being perpetrated by luddites and imbeciles so paranoid they feel the need to apply a double standard in which the bill of rights does not apply on the internet.
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In my mind, if you have something and I take it off you, that's stealing as you don't have it any more.
If you have something and I copy it, that may well be a crime, or immoral, but provided you
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Please don't promote this butchery of the english language being perpetrated by luddites and imbeciles so paranoid they feel the need to apply a double standard in which the bill of rights does not apply on the internet.
Sadly for this specific case, "Hey! He stole my idea!" was in use in English long before the Internet existed.
That old saying will be a lot harder to get people to stop saying/thinking than all the newer made up stuff where 'theft' means 4-5 different crimes, only one of which is actually theft.
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Mmm. And what of all those spies who have been charged with stealing secrets?
Just us a filter? (Score:2)
Some/all of APC's surge suppressors contain in-line EMI filters [google.com].
Is that enough to stop this hack?
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That kind of EMI filtering reduces interfering signals (coming in and going out), but does not eliminate them. If the signal is low enough not to interfere with other equipment that is good enough. The conducted emissions testing required for FCC, EC, etc has limits (more strict at higher frequencies). If the measured signal is below the limit you pass, but the signal is still measurable.
Listen to music from your computer with a radio (Score:3, Interesting)
A great deal of people here already know, but for the others:
http://www.erikyyy.de/tempest/ [erikyyy.de]
Software to generate images (noise) on your CRT screen so that the generated interference will translate as sound you can listen to on a radio receiver
It works great to listen to music when you do not have a sound card!
Mechanical Solution (Score:4, Interesting)
I worked in a facility that was fully TEMPEST shielded in the 80's. Dual airlock doors with full metal seals to get in. The power line leakage problem was taken care of a motor/generator setup. Incoming power only went to an electic motor. The motor was connected by a shaft which spun a generator to supply power to the computer room. With only a mechanical connection no data would be leaking back.
Re:Mechanical Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked in a facility that was fully TEMPEST shielded in the 80's. Dual airlock doors with full metal seals to get in. The power line leakage problem was taken care of a motor/generator setup. Incoming power only went to an electic motor. The motor was connected by a shaft which spun a generator to supply power to the computer room. With only a mechanical connection no data would be leaking back.
So that's basically a mechanically implemented low-pass filter, right? I would think that it would be easier and cheaper to implement electronic low-pass filters at each wall outlet. Especially if you're worried about someone plugging a sniffer into one of the facility's interior power outlets.
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But it wouldn't be cheaper, and it would definitely be less secure. With a mechanical low-pass filter, you have one central node you have to maintain. You have a big capital outlay, but once built, the motor-generat
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But it wouldn't be cheaper, and it would definitely be less secure. With a mechanical low-pass filter, you have one central node you have to maintain. You have a big capital outlay, but once built, the motor-generator combo is very, very reliable, and needs little maintenance. It is practically impossible for a lone attacker to compromise it. With electronic low-pass filters at each outlet, you have hundreds (if not thousands) of nodes to monitor and maintain (consider the ongoing expense of that), and it becomes very easy for a single person to compromise one of those nodes using just a screwdriver.
Good security is never just a matter of money. It's a matter of understanding how attackers behave, knowing how people and equipment can be compromised, and then spending money wisely, even if not frugally.
But the mechanical barrier is so big and expensive that you can only afford to have them at major barriers. That still leaves all the devices on the "trusted" side of the barrier as running on what's essentially a big, trusted data bus.
If someone can sneak a sniffer into the secure area and plug it into an unmonitored electrical outlet that's electrically near a secure system, then you have a problem.
So I guess the question is, do you trust all the people on the inside? And do you adequately scrutinize a
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Sneaking a sniffer into a temest secure facility - OH, YOU are a funny person, even if you don't mean to be - hint - no electronic devices in or out, and you have a TS clearance just to walk in the front door
Up until the mid 1980s (can't remember the exact year) the codeword TEMPEST itself was classified at least Secret - I never needed to know more than "It's a kind of RF testing - here are some of the labs that do it, get some quotes for us" - and no, it wasn't done over the phone. I remember when it was
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An electronic solution would be easier and cheaper, but how do you prove it works? What happens when a component fails? Sometimes simple solutions are the most reliable.
Presumably by the same means you prove that the mechanical system works.
My guess is that there's actually more existing research on how to design extremely effective electronic filters for a certain frequency band (or anything that makes the SNR get very close to 0 while keeping noise to acceptable limits), than there is regarding the use of a motor/generator combination to achieve the same effect. If anything, I'd expect more justification to be needed for the (presumably less studied) mechanical solution
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Wouldn't a voltage fluctuations inside simply become resistive fluctuations in the motor, causing the motor speed to fluctuate, and thus cause fluctuations on the supply power?
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Sure, but rotational inertia would smooth them away unless the signal was at 0.1bps or so...
Mal-2
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Wouldn't a voltage fluctuations inside simply become resistive fluctuations in the motor, causing the motor speed to fluctuate, and thus cause fluctuations on the supply power?
If there's a flywheel in there (and the sheer mass of the rotor assemblies will act as one) then the fluctuations will be so small that it'll be just about impossible to see anything, even with top quality equipment attached at the perfect point (on the outside, of course).
The other possibility is to just put a lot of other disparate busy traffic on in the inside too. Sure you'll be seeing fluctuations, but you'll never figure out what they mean; for all you know, that glitch you've just measured isn't a pa
A reason to keep that old CRT (Score:2)
So far as this being a practical way of eavesdropping - I don't buy it. There are lots more established methods of discovering what people are typing, plus this seems to completely overlook all the activity from the mouse. Governmant agencies? Nah, if money was an issue, they'd just kick the door down and take your PCs away. if they want
ungrounded outlets (Score:2)
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In other news... (Score:2)
Bogus rehash of old methods (Score:3, Interesting)
This "Story" is a bogus rehashing of old, old methods. Old as in 60 to 80 years old. The NSA has been grabbing serial teletype signals off adjacent signal and power wires for at least that long.
It's old and in this case quantitatively bogus. The keyboard signals are milliamps. The leakage to chassis ground will be at least 40dB down, or under a microamp. The leakage from there to earth ground will be at least another 20dB down so we're down in the nanoamp range. By comparison the background ground currents from the PC's switching power supply and other devices will be several thousand times greater. If there's a light dimmer on the same circuit the noise will be nearly a million times greater. You can't combat that kind of background noise.
Same problem with the keyboard vibrations-laser scheme. They got the idea from a 1930's detective story where the secretary put her gold cigarette case under the phone receiver so her typing could be heard on the other end. Old!
But that only had a chance of working because each typewriter key row has a specific length of lever and spring, plus the typefaces are arrayed in a curve, so each one strikes the paper from a different angle, giving the listener an opportunity to guess the letter from the combination of X info from the length of the lever and spring, and Y info from the typeface strike angle.
But that is completely inapplicable to a modern keyboard, where THE KEYS ARE ALL IDENTICAL. No differing row and arc info at all. Maybe a teensy difference if the keyboard base is flimsy and has a slight change in resonance across the board. But unlikely.
I call bogus.
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Yup, I'm w/you. There are several exploits but your point is spot on, old electro-mechanical (read motor driven) consoles/printers were exploitable and this was a well known topic within the TEMPEST community.
For a modern keyboard, not only is it hard to tell the difference between keys but it would be hard to tell the difference between computers as well. In addition to the information supplied above, this is a testimony to modern manufacturing as well (uniform products all make the same noises).
For all
Easily solved....via my ingenius new invention (Score:2)
I just cut 2 power cables off of old power supplies, I have spliced the cut ends together; pos to pos, neg to neg, grd to grd. It's one long cable terminating in a 3 prong power plug at each end!
It's so eloquent!!!
Now all I have to is plug one side into an outlet and plug the other side into another outlet that is about 5 feet away!!!
I'm sure It'll probably send those secret stealing feds into an endless loop.
I've got one side plugged in, just gotta get this other side plugged in and THEN WE'LL SEE WHO'S LA
Isolation Transformer / UPS (Score:2)
I wonder if having a isolation transformer, or UPS keeps this from happening.
Add Noise (Score:2)
Next problem please.
Imagine what the government can do (Score:2)
There was a Slashdot story about this recently [slashdot.org], though the equipment was a bit simpler, basically a piece of paper saying "List all your social networking sites and passwords along with your job application."
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they seem to be filtering the signal quite a bit (obviosly), and a bandpass filter at a known frequency would take care of quite a lot of the random noise from the rest of the system.
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Possibly, because "neutral" is just the same in theory but slightly harder to isolate from the mains supply, but in theory there's no reason why not.
However, only stupid countries have unearthed outlets.
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I want to see Anti-Sec hit slashdot. Maybe then they'll fix their broken fucking code.
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In short: Yes, it's very easy to capture keystrokes over bluetooth, even when the device isn't paired with you. Google for "bluetooth keyboard sniffing".
But there are easier, more reliable ways to get information. [xkcd.com] Let's say you were involved in corporate espionage, and you wanted to capture the keystrokes of a company's CEO. Here's the easy way to do it: