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."

Comments

A legit reason to have the radio on all the time!

[sandytaru]

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.

Re:Easy fix

[lisaparratt]

Read Slashdot at -1.