Researchers hack keyboards, trap data
p2pnet news view Cool | Security:- It’s possible to spy on text entered on a wired keyboard by remotely analysing the keystrokes through electromagnetic emissions, says a new report.
And the authors say they found four different ways to, “fully or partially recover keystrokes from wired keyboards at a distance up to 20 meters, even through walls”.
“Computer keyboards are often used to transmit sensitive information such as username/password (e.g. to log into computers, to do e-banking money transfer, etc.),” say Lausanne Security and Cryptography Laboratory researchers Martin Vuagnoux and Sylvain Pasini in Compromising electromagnetic emanations of wired keyboards.
In a video demo featuring a Logitech keyboard, they type, ‘trust no one’ and the text is picked up on a monitor on the other side of the room.
There’s also a second video demonstration.
Vulnerabilities on these kinds of devices, “will definitely kill the security of any computer or ATM,” they say, going on:
“Wired keyboards emit electromagnetic waves, because they contain eletronic components. These eletromagnetic radiation could reveal sensitive information such as keystrokes. Although Kuhn already tagged keyboards as risky, we did not find any experiment or evidence proving or refuting the practical feasibility to remotely eavesdrop keystrokes, especially on modern keyboards.
“To determine if wired keyboards generate compromising emanations, we measured the electromagnetic radiations emitted when keys are pressed. To analyze compromising radiations, we generally use a receiver tuned on a specific frequency. However, this method may not be optimal: the signal does not contain the maximal entropy since a significant amount of information is lost.”
The approach used by Vuagnoux and Pasini was to acquire the signal directly from the antenna and to work on the whole captured electromagnetic spectrum.
As well as the for techniques mentioned earlier, the two discovered 11 different wired keyboard models bought between 2001 and 2008 (PS/2, USB and laptop) are vulnerable to at least one of our their attacks.
“We conclude that wired computer keyboards sold in the stores generate compromising emanations (mainly because of the cost pressures in the design),” they state, adding:
“Hence they are not safe to transmit sensitive information. No doubt that our attacks can be significantly improved, since we used relatively unexpensive equipments.
Vuagnoux and Pasini”promised they’ll be releasing more information on the attacks soon.
News 1130 – , October , 2008
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October 21st, 2008 at 11:56 am
Tin Foil for my keyboard.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Tin Foil for my walls, tin foil for my keyboard, tin foil for my computer screen, and tin foil for my wallet… O.o
Computer hardware manufactures need to just spend a little money electromagnetically-enclosing their products. Tin foil is cheap, but gets kinda noisy sometimes…
October 21st, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Great for Orwellian Great Britain!
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081020-your-privacy-is-an-illusion-uk-attacks-civil-liberties.html
October 21st, 2008 at 3:47 pm
someone is on the ball, seen this on hack-a-day yesterday
if you watch “enemy of the state” the guy’s got a cage around his tools, it’s the only way to disrupt such prying. Copper works best. This and much more is well known since Tesla.
put chicken wire or fence wire on your windows and it’s solved, if u have wifi it’s best way to protect your house LAN, if you getting wifi or any other outside signals then its gotta be outside wire and well protected.
using a cell might be kind of nutz and u’ll need to walk outside
i did this as a test and had white van watching and scanning my place for weeks, hello police state
i finally walked outside and approached from opposite direction, seen them watching what i was watching on my TV, and listening to my phone calls … i was NOT happy!
let’s just say they weren’t happy by time i was done with them
October 21st, 2008 at 7:18 pm
freeman as in canadian freeman?… thats some creepy info, was it one of those white astrovans with tinted windows? did they manage to get access to ur wifi? was it secured? I want more info on freemans case.
screw wired keyboards they are soon to be extinct; though definitely interesting didn’t know they emitted electromagnetic radiation and can be tracked?). Keyloggers on the other hand will be a weapon of choice for some time and theirs not much we can do about it other than prevent them with a/v, secure networks etc.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:00 pm
This is old news from over 15-years ago Jon.
My Hubby worked for a facility contracted out by the gov to prevent the eavesdropping of EM on certain gov systems.
This type of snooping has been going on for over 15 years.
O.G.
:p
October 21st, 2008 at 8:03 pm
oh and these “researchers” are 15 years behind the times.
Maybe they should just pick up a book and redo work from over 15 years ago.
insert eye roll here
and I use the term “researchers” loosely
October 21st, 2008 at 8:23 pm
@freeman
Your long time abuse of crack is showing itself.
anf no, frigging chicken wire or copper wire WILL NOT prevent it.
lay off the crack and stop believeing everything you see on tv. k?
October 21st, 2008 at 9:33 pm
re: U know who and uhg
Well i guess you haven’t done any time in the military or other experimental ops. Talk to any WW2 veteran that was in communications, testing, radar sites or related, then get back to me. You can find them at any Legion.
re: uhg about wire … wire needs to be charged with at least 3.5 V. but i guess it’s too hard to figure this out
Guess you young pups need to study your history more instead of listening to all that university and regular school crap. Maybe do your own experiments before you “harrp” on PPL. You’d be amazed and totally freaked at what military has and is only slowly being brought to light.
Here, try this for a primer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeUgDJc6AWE&feature=related
Then find out how many times he’s been raided by DOD for simply using obsolete Navy equipment ROFL
October 21st, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Actually I’m the “hubby” of “U know who” she wrote a bit of what I worked on 15 or so years ago. She mentioned this article to me and I saw the crap you wrote. This isn’t new at all nor is the simple technology of “shielding” new either.
You actually don’t have a clue.
But hey, I’m only a professional who worked in this field for the Gov. on projects that don’t concern you. Your crack inspired conspiracy poor-mans-james-bond bullshit is where its at. Right?
Matter of fact I’ve been involved with more than this ancient technology that these “reseachers” only just found out about (or could have found out from any 15+ year old journal)
============
freeman Says:
October 21st, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Well i guess you haven’t done any time in the military or other experimental ops. Talk to any WW2 veteran that was in communications, testing, radar sites or related
============
I have no need to tell you what my work was directly involved in, though you may have touched on one of them.
so listen, lay of the crack pipe and stop spreading “chicken-wire” bullshit that you haven’t a clue about and probably read on some conspiracy website. Or just go back and watch your youtube vids that have no bearing on the matter and escape to another dimension via an electro-graviton ray gun.
Or go pick up an oscilloscope and try and prove your BS. You will be in for a disappointment while you try and wrap chicken wire around your house and energize it. lol
kids these day. No respect.
October 22nd, 2008 at 12:03 am
re: uhg
And actually you’re wrong. I’m very well informed as I was directly involved in some of these projects and have many friends and acquaintances in same. So you can say what you want and still it doesn’t negate the facts that even though simple it does work in the right configurations.
I understand very well that many frequencies will not be stopped by above configs. As a matter of fact large part of the spectrum. Yet it can disturb sensing of private information enough to be unusable by many scanners. An oscilloscope and an antenna is only minor part of testing. You should well know it takes a full spectrum analyzer, different kinds of antennas and few other toys to find out what’s behind many protected sites. Nice try though.
Projects that don’t concern me? You better think again since these projects are being disseminated by people who have actually worked on them, have figured them out, or just stumbled upon them whether you, military, corporations, Gov. or the elite like it or not. General population is well aware of military being 50 to 100 yrs ahead of what they actually show. One needs to only look at corporate and military websites as to what their job openings are.
Your comments are perfect proof of just how these institutions are snowballing the genral public. And it’s the public that has the right to find out what the spooks are up to. Whether what I write is right or wrong doesn’t actually matter. What matters is the idea that time of secrets is coming to an end and people will find out what is being hidden from them.
As you can plainly see many websites are carrying such information and are dabbling in it already and proficiently.
Here is a taste for you: http://keelynet.com/
October 22nd, 2008 at 5:48 pm
WILL YOU KIDS STOP ARGUING! AM I GOING TO HAVE TO TURN THIS CAR AROUND !?!?!
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Are we almost there yet?
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:58 am
While I can see how “chicken wire” would not block very high frequencies, surely a real Farraday Cage made of fine metal gauze or solid copper sheets would block any RF radiation regardless of frequency. Is anyone disputing this? If so, please explain the mechanism by which the radiation would be detected.
This seems to be an academic discussion at best. Would not a spy need to get a “signature” of the keyboard being monitored? Surely not all keyboards would produce the exact same signature. If a spook had to type out each letter on the keyboard to get a “baseline” result, then hide a receiver less than 20 feet from the computer, then make sure there were not other keyboards typing away within range of his receiver which would confuse and corrupt his results, and finally determining that the target person didn’t use different keyboards, he would probably just use other methods of spying. What about a person who cuts and pastes his passwords? With no keyboard involved there would be nothing to see.
It seems that the real point of the original article was that the researchers were able to do this eavesdropping using very cheap equipment, not that this was an original groundbreaking technique. Furthermore, without any data about how reliable the results are, or exactly what the 4 methods of interception are, there is a real question if they did anything of value at all.
October 23rd, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Bob Dobbs Says:
surely a real Farraday Cage made of fine metal gauze or solid copper sheets would block any RF radiation regardless of frequency. Is anyone disputing this?
No. No dispute. But a “cage” is not the same as “chicke wire” around your house.
LOL its very different heh.
This what the everyday person can do, which does squat. lol I still laugh when I see this.
Beryllium-Copper alloys/mesh (”cage”) was the best back then (probably still is) coupled of course with a bunch of ferrite blocks/gaskets. Even after all that you would still have “leaks” that would have to be “sealed”. Not something the everyday user can do and afford.
The metal used is important. Even if surounded by “fine metal gauze” you will have leaks. It comes down to the properties of the alloy used/chosen.
I think today they may have some polymers that might do the trick a bit.
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:58 pm
thank you
Therefore we can safely go back to the picture above and see 3 little words “trust no one”.
Why? Well, for this you must read this 2 page article http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081020_the_idiots_who_rule_america/ … which relates directly to Canada and any Commonwealth Banking System as well.
Enjoy
October 24th, 2008 at 12:18 am
heh “Freeman” reminds me of the california guy (or was it a florida guy) who actually wrapped his house in tinfoil to prevent the “mind control” rays from entering his house and his neighbors sued him.
The guy was on the right track. Not only do you have to prevent penetration, you have to prevent leaks as well.
So under his aluminum he should have had a Beryllium-Copper mesh over his house and ferrite gaskets around his doors, windows and toilet. heh
October 24th, 2008 at 1:57 am
i was wondering how long it would take for the hecklers, nay sayers, manipulators and spin doctors to show up. Didn’t have to wait long, right “uhg”?
Better come up with much better replies than that, no need to make yourself look silly any further
October 24th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
While you’re at it have a good read of what the Pentagon plans: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/10/packs-of-robots-will-hunt-down.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=specrt10_head_Pack%20hunting%20robots