Keyboard Sound Aids Password Cracking

stinerman writes "Three students at UC-Berkley used a 10 minute recording of a keyboard to recover 96% of the characters typed during the session. The article details that their methods did not require a 'training text' in order to calibrate the conversion algorithm as has been used previously. The research paper [PDF] notes that '90% of 5-character random passwords using only letters can be generated in fewer than 20 attempts by an adversary; 80% of 10-character passwords can be generated in fewer than 75 attempts.'"

Comments

But get this

[tabkey12]

Your private key could be sniffed out just by recording the sound your computer makes:
http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~tromer/acoustic/

click clack

[pizza_milkshake]

click click click clack clack click!