Sniffing keystrokes via laser, power lines - Hack a Day

Sniffing keystrokes via laser, power lines
posted Mar 20th 2009 5:29pm by Eliot Phillips
filed under: laser hacks, peripherals hacks, security hacks

keystroke

Researchers from Inverse Path showed a couple interesting techniques for
sniffing keystrokes at CanSecWest. For their first experiments they used
a laser pointed at the shiny back of a laptop. The keystrokes would
cause the laptop to vibrate which they could detect just like they would
with any laser listening device. They've done it successfully from
anywhere between 50 to 100 feet away. They used techniques similar to
those in speech recognition to determine what sentences were being typed.

In a different attack, they sniffed characters from a PS/2 keyboard by
monitoring the ground line in an outlet 50 feet away. They haven't yet
been able to collect more than just single strokes, but expect to get
full words and sentences soon. This leakage via power line is discussed
in the 1972 Tempest document we posted about earlier. The team said it
wasn't possible with USB or laptop keyboards.

Go there..

http://hackaday.com/2009/03/20/sniffing-keystrokes-via-laser-power-lines/

Don