3 ms·

a citation from the article has an FAQ with just that question. http://tau.ac.il/~tromer/acoustic/#Q2 http://tau.ac.il/~tromer/acoustic/#Q2

• cjg 15y ago
  And the answer given in that link is: "First, when the CPU is carrying out a long operation, it may create a characteristic acoustic spectral signature: for example, below we show how RSA signature/decryption sounds different for different secret keys. Second, we get temporal information about the length of each operation, and this can be used to mount timing attacks (see Q10), especially when the attacker can affect the input to the operation (i.e., in chosen-ciphertext attack scenario)."