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Scientists Extract RSA Key From GnuPG Using Sound of CPU
kthreadd writes "In their research paper titled RSA Key Extraction via Low-Bandwidth Acoustic Cryptanalysis, Daniel Genkin, Adi Shamir and Eran Tromer et al. present a method for extracting decryption keys from the GnuPG security suite using an interesting side-channel attack. By analysing the acoustic sound made by the CPU they were able to extract a 4096-bit RSA key in about an hour (PDF). A modern mobile phone placed next to the computer is sufficient to carry out the attack, but up to four meters have been successfully tested using specially designed microphones."
Or HCF, if you wanted to be really sure.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I'm totally going to use this if I'm ever asked to turn my music down in the office. "But sir, this is increasing my encryption security!"
Since 90% of the people in my office are not tech people, that just might work.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Back when the 486dx4 was out, I'd tune my FM radio to ~100mHz
Wow. You have a radio that tunes that low? What signals did you hear? Nyquist tells us that the highest frequency you could modulate on that would be 50 mHz, well below the range of human hearing.
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