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Laser Sniffing Captures Typed Keystrokes From 50-100 Feet
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.)
Sharks with frigging lasers..
I would have had first post, but I had to close my blinds to avoid anyone spying on my leet Slashdot posting skills.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
If you go blind while you are typing, you are probably being sniffed.
Or you are having severe problems with your retinas.
In either case, you should feel your way to an opthamologist quickly.
dynamic time warp again!
If you go blind while you are typing, you are probably being sniffed.
Or you are having severe problems with your retinas.
In either case, you should feel your way to an opthamologist quickly.
Actually, Infrared lasers only hurt eyes if you look directly into them. Using a low-powered infrared laser pointed at a keyboard wouldn't be any different than using a red laser pointed at a keyboard except that the victim would see the dot. Unless they're using a mirrored keyboard the light would be diffused and not refracted so it would be similar to looking at a resultant red dot from a laser instead of directly into a laser.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
looks like it's time to stock up on tinfoil and old reflective (mainly old aol) cds.
imagine what the govt can do if regular scientists can do this with regular lasers (not including with sharks)
Don't look directly at the keyboard with your remaining good eye.
Sounds like a good way to curb people who hunt-and-peck!
It's time to switch to a DVORAK keyboard. Let them sniff that.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Bummer.
My favorite keyboards are always the loudest ones.
Just type with l33t text or other slang what words ain't on the dictionary and they just cant find out what you are typing.
Even school kids knows this and thats why they write short messages with their cell phones and for tests so the kid on the next bench can not copy what they write....
Go back to Dvorak.
Sorry, the nerd in me speaks :p
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
KKAABBBBBOOOOMMMMMMM!.
Yours In Communism,
Kilgore Trout
Looks like I'll need to buy blinds for my basement windows now.
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revolutionary
Everything I type on my keyboard is of great value, so of course spies will adopt sophisticated technologies to try to monitor me. They want to be wealthy and famous just as I have .. oh wait.
Fine, I'll just make sure I'm less that 50 feet away.
I hear that a pair of binoculars works well for this purpose, too. I'm told that they even work through glass.
wow.....toilet seats are suppose to go for $600.
Just try sniffing my keystrokes! I use the on screen keyboard.
...thinking of. (Not very much, though.)
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Now I need a bigger piece of tinfoil!
If they did this in a movie a couple of years ago, I would have called bullshit on them.
Moderators: Before moderating a comment Insightful/Informative, check to see if a child post has already refuted it.
Use a keyboard which changes the entire key layout every time you press any key.
I seem remember reading or hearing somewhere that windows were fairly IR opaque. (Maybe it was Mythbusters?) Anyway, if that's the case, you just need to stay inside and watch your keyboard like a hawk to prevent people spying on you...
Well I guess we'll all have to start typing "I KNOW YOU'RE SPYING" every few minutes or so, shift held down of course (no copy-pasting!),
That'll show them!
See http://xkcd.com/525/ for funnies
Don't panic
And the keystroke that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the cone... of silence.
You can't take the sky from me...
...
For high-tech methods of electronic surveillance, I thought Stephenson's van-Eck phreaking in Cryptonomicon held the record. But laser microphones clearly win as far as range is concerned. :)
>Laser Sniffing Captures Typed Keystrokes From 50-100 Feet
As long as they can't capture keystrokes typed with your hands, I feel pretty safe.
"Using an infrared laser would prevent a victim from knowing they were being spied on."
An infrared laser would not "work through a glass window". Most glass is essentially opaque to infrared. That's why your car gets so hot in the summer... UV comes in, warms up the upholstery, but the IR emitted from the hot interior just reflects off the glass, back into the car.
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.
The reason greenhouses work so well is that glass does a decent job of blocking infrared light (hmmm... maybe someone can think up a catchy name for the effect).
I'm not an optics wonk but I'd expect the infrared laser through a window trick would be tough to pull off. Especially so if the glass is low-e.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
Parent post is correct. I work for a window manufacturer and our IG units are only ever filled with normal air, nitrogen, or argon.
("IG units" are insulated glass units, AKA double pane windows, and consist of two lites of glass with a spacer between them. They are sealed shut with PIB and silicone.)
It's possible that they're confused by part of the manufacturing process where the IG units go through a vacuum chamber which removes all the air, before filling the units with nitrogen or argon and sealing them. But I'm quite sure we don't make any vacuum filled units. And even if we did, I have to think that at least some sound would be transmitted through the spacer that holds the two lites of glass apart.
As if the bow wouldn't be bad enough, the vacuum would cause the windows to explode even more violently than they already do if they were broken. As someone who has seen tempered lites of glass around 6' x 9' explode, I can tell you that your living room would already be a mess of broken glass if a picture window like that broke. You really don't want a vacuum in there to make things worse. Especially given that a window that size would likely be made out of 6 mm glass...
Well, I guess if someone was crazy enough to make a window like that, they'd use laminated glass. At least, I hope they would. Our customers are always trying to push the limits of how big you can allow a lite to get before it has to be thicker ...
And then a step to the right
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
A company that I used to work for put white noise generators on some of the windows to prevent lasers from picking up sounds inside the rooms. Obviously, this was only done for very secretive projects.
AKA you can see the keyboard. What was the laser for again?
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Why waste the time snooping and cracking passwords when you could do things the old fashioned way. A red hot framing nail up the sysadmins uretha works every time.
Quote from the "Jack Bauer diaries"
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
Do not sniff laser with remaining nostril.
the world's first decent reason not to use a model m. (of course, if you do get sniffed using one, you'll have a much better chance of killing the bastards with it than you will with some rubber-dome POS from dell....)
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
so use a uv laser and hope the targets laptop doesn't fluoresce
Having gained fame by re-using 35-year-old spy techniques on computer keyboards, they make headlines again using 20-year old infrared-laser-on-glass techniques.
I'm thinking of blowing everyone away by showing that "invisible ink" can be made with lemon juice and then read -- get this -- over a flame.
Since typical window glass blocks a large portion of the infrared spectrum that lasers are tuned to, their idea of being stealthy seems less likely.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
ooh - I haven't seen anything about this in ages. I remember seeing a film once that started with some politician/businessmen types having a clandestine meeting in an office tower. Unbeknownst to them some guys in the tower opposite are happily listening in with said infra-red laser until one of the security guys notices the beam through a glass of red wine and the chase begins ...
Anyone know what this film is?
Could incorporate the new technology in the remake ...
This proves it, everyone out there is watching me (or my keyboard strokes)!
I was under the distinct impression that glass was an excellent medium for blocking/massively dispersing IR, even in "super awesome laser" form.
That would make it somewhat difficult to use anything but visible, very obvious light.
Just another ignorant American.
The fact that people make files of particular formats is not relevant. That they might be told to take a screen capture, for example, with the words "make a JPG of your screen" would instead be a relevant scenario. See the difference? Let's try this:
"here's a tissue for your nose"
"here's a Kleenex for your nose"
I don't think we're really at the point of taking this particular "brand" (MP3) as a generic term, so I'm guessing GGP really did mean for people to make MP3s. I'm guessing this (excessive level of) specification was not because he or she thoroughly equates "MP3" with "recording", but more likely because they are accustomed to conceiving of recordings as MP3s. That is, they distinguish between the general concept of recording and the specific encoding by which it can be done, but generally thinks of recordings with a particular codec.
My response is, "No, using a JPG for a screenshot would be silly for what's currently on my screen, when I can get better compression and lossless reproduction with any number of indexed color formats." Similarly, "There are formats other than MP3 and I might suggest that if you're really paranoid you may not want to give the eavesdroppers anything extra to work with, including encoding artifacts in your decoy background sound. Perhaps you really mean recording instead of accidentally overspecifying."
Yet again you marked my comment "redundant", even though it was the first one to mention the subject matter.
Clue: These posts have something called a "timestamp". Some of those other comments were almost 12 hours AFTER mine!
Strap a little vibration unit to the laptop to add your own vibrations. Instant security.