Here's some news likely to make you a little queasy: Researchers have discovered a way to intercept keystrokes on a wired keyboard by intercepting electromagnetic waves emanating from the keyboard's connector wire.
Your Keyboard Is Telling On You
That means they could see what someone was typing from 20 yards away by tapping into the signal between a keyboard and computer. And they have the video to prove it.
Swiss researchers Martin Vuagnoux and Sylvain Pasini, of the Security and Cryptography Laboratory at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, acted on the theoretical probability that the electronic signal between keyboards and computers could be detectable as electromagnetic radiation.
The researchers write on their blog:
"We found 4 different ways (including the Kuhn attack) to fully or partially recover keystrokes from wired keyboards at a distance up to 20 meters, even through walls. We tested 11 different wired keyboard models bought between 2001 and 2008 (PS/2, USB and laptop). They are all vulnerable to at least one of our 4 attacks.
"We conclude that wired computer keyboards sold in the stores generate compromising emanations (mainly because of the cost pressures in the design). Hence they are not safe to transmit sensitive information."
They've provided video demonstrations of what they discovered using low-quality equipment. Now that it's been shown it can be done, some say with the right equipment a spy could intercept keystrokes in near real time-about 25 milliseconds! This will be a fun development for the next spy movie, don't you think?
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