46 ms·

"typed by intercepting side-channel signals produced by the first laptop’s keyboard software, which had been modified to make the characters easier to identify.

• stewartbutler 12y ago
  > keyboard software Sounds to me like they modified the driver so that it had some kind of emissions pattern they could track. Driver could be modified via a virus or something.
  • clearf 12y ago
    If you could modify the driver, you may not need to rely on the subtlety of the emissions patterns...
  • unreal37 12y ago
    Let's say your computer emits a inaudible signal at 4.127Hz when the A key is pressed, 4.131Hz when the B key is pressed, etc. There is a unique signal emitted for each key. It sounds like they just modified the driver to make those signals easier to detect. (i.e. A became 4Hz, B became 4.1Hz, etc.) If they had more sensitive detectors, maybe they wouldn't need to modify the driver. My guess.
• unreal37 12y ago
  Actually, this shows that intercepting the password entered from either audio or electronic signals from the other side of a wall is possible. It's just a matter of perfecting the technology to intercept it. Like, if I can read Chinese as long as the strokes are clearly made, you can say that I can read Chinese. Now it's just a matter of increasing error correction to remove the qualifier. It's only a matter of budget to be able to read the keyboard characters without modifying the driver.