Keyboard "eavesdropping" just got way easier, thanks to electromagnetic emanations
By Paul Miller 
posted October 20th 2008 1:14PM
posted October 20th 2008 1:14PM
[Thanks, Dave]
posted October 20th 2008 1:14PM
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Hey maybe they can have a new USB gadget... one that spews out similar (but random) electromagnetic waves as that of the keyboard, in order to cause interference (it would have to cater to different keyboards though, I think).
What a Joke. lets use a notebook, but close the lid so the display is not on. Lets remove the External LCD to remove the radiated EMI. Great!!! Now that we can't see what we are doing we should be very productive. Next lets get rid of out power supply so we can only run on batteries and do work (that we can't see) for 2 hours. Oh yes, I forgot...since we closed the laptop, we need to plug in an external keyboard so we can do our typing without seeing what are doing. OK great...One more thing. We must remember to type at a maximum speed of 1 character per second. Any faster and the RF on the keyboard wires will not be able to be decoded. Or have a three year old hit the keys for you.
The rest of you...it's time to put on your tinfoil hats!
It's a good thing I already cover all my computer equipment with aluminum foil.
People, please understand. This is a controlled experiment. Of course, conditions are favorable for a positive outcome. The point is that the technology exists and works. With time it will be refined further for better filtering and faster processing.
If you have ever built an application or manufactured an item you will know that you start with small scale testing to prove out the concept or design. Then you backfill to accommodate for less than optimal situations. The finished product never looks like the original prototype.
so no one is concerned that this could all be a hoax and the app is just a little program that goes through the motions and pretends to decode what the person types?
If it were a hoax they wouldn't have had to unplug the keyboard and plug it into an unplugged laptop to make it work. If they were faking it, they would have made it work quicker and easier.
Finally those hairdryers will find some good use! Plug one in, along with an electric beard shaver and turn them on... they will create so much noise that not only it will be impossible to hack you, but your computer will have trouble understanding what you are typing... lol!
If anyone has ever been to Virginia, they may have noticed that the NSA building among others, are GREEN! This was the TEMPEST program instituted years ago to stop the gathering of signals VIA EMW's from CRT's which could be picked up several hundred feet away from the target and displayed on the LP's monitor as if they were typing the words themselves!
Soon they will come up with a way to pick up your brain waves and print out what your thinking!
I'm sure they already know what I'm thinking!
Go Ron Paul!!
IFIXPCS
This would be too much of a pain in the ass, considering that PS/2 keyboards can range in frequency from 10kHz to 16.7kHz, and USB can range between 1.5MHz to 450MHz +/- up to 15kHz based on low/full/high speed.
Thats not to mention how many other PS/2 and USB devices in the vicinity you would also pick up that would most likely corrupt the data as you could be picking up multiple devices simultaneously.
How bored were these people?
How did they figure out this shit. I mean, how could something put some random electronics together and pick up keyboard strokes. This is crazy. Its only a matter of time before this gets crazier and can record keystrokes faster and find out which keyboard is typing. This hacker vs Keyboards with Social Security Numbers? Come on. How did they find out there stuff would pick up a signal like that. This is crazy
This is totally flawed. In a real environment there are many EM signals being produced that would have to be filtered before any meaningful signal could be interpreted.
Simply put in a real environment this kind of eavesdropping would be like looking for a red object while wearing red tinted glasses.
This video is a joke. Keyboards do not carry much current, more on the scale of 10mA. Not nearly enough power to transmit a signal one meter at 5 V!.
And even if you could pick up the small magnetic field change, it would be overpowered by external noise sources, such as Flourescent lights, other monitors etc...
I call BS on this video. The reason the laptop is closed is because ?
What about other languages? Chinese would be hard to decode. Seems like the vulnerability exists with english only. lol.
Some of the comments I'm reading here are amusing. This is nothing new. I did RFI/EMI/EMP shielding all through the '80's and up until Clinton, who killed off what remained of Reagan's increased defense spending. TEMPEST concerns have been around since the '70's and the government paid my father's company and others big bucks back then to protect their information from electronic eavesdroppers. I won't say more about it, as I'm still bound to a certain extent by secrecy laws, but the idea that this is some new and surprising development is laughable. The only thing that could possibly be new about it is that some civilian scientists free of governmental NDA's have done it successfully where before they never had.
However, in saying that, I'm not implying that government agents have successfully intercepted and decoded keyboard signals before. I have no positive knowledge whether they have or haven't; that's classified information. Nevertheless, the fact that both the CIA and the KGB have had programs of the TEMPEST sort, each with an offensive as well as defensive component, should at least suggest to you that the potential for compromise by way of keyboard emanations has been known, worried about, and pursued--to the tune of many millions of dollars--for several decades now.
Does anyone remember this: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE5D81F30F935A25754C0A96F948260&fta=y
Our embassy in Moscow became compromised due to the incomprehensible politics of Washington liberals, who contrived to have Soviet construction workers working on the construction of it. So what happened? The KGB moles not only bugged the shit out of the building, but they drilled and poked holes through the building's RF shield, thereby rendering it vulnerable to the leakage of emanations. I was elsewhere at the time and didn't work on that project, so I don't know how big a deal it ever became back home here, but in security circles it was an infamous episode directly related to TEMPEST concerns. So, to repeat: nothing new here, as far as I can see. Nothing new at all.
eyeroll,
what would be a good shielding meaurement to adhere to make evesdropping on a keyboard more difficult or virtually non existanct from 1o ft away?
Wow. I look forward to reading the research paper once it gets released.
use touch screen computers only ;)
Simply use your mouse and copy paste all characters you type for your password when logging in, and you're pretty safe.
I use a system much like that for my own webmail system: http://www.squirrelmail.org/plugin_view.php?id=159
Ok, now wait a minute - a keyboard alone connected a power source emits a frequency that can be picked up through RF waves from a transceiver? I wonder what the other two experiments are - probably good idea they don't show too much of the technology off.
1) Frequencies travel at different wave lengths and can be filtered to pick up certain wave lengths.(correct?) Depends on how their program/hardware works, it seems that they removed the power supply so they don't have to mess with the filtering - easier and quicker transmission to show it works.
2) However, is it really as slow as 1 keystroke per second? If so, then no worries. But somehow I don't think that's the case. A post was written that faster technologies could be built to decode the frequencies quicker - hence perhaps eventually keystrokes as fast as a typist could be picked up by an antenna that doesn't look like over-sized cake-mixer whisks may be used...maybe the size of an oven thermometer instead?
3) Towers included? perhaps if #1 & #2 were true, then reading kb strokes that is connected to a tower/desktop style is possible?
These are just questions of possibilities and theories. Man, the potential security breeches that could be made...the possibilities...the power....in the wrong hands. ugh.