Shoulder surfing for passwords by ear

[Sunder]

Hmmm, sounds like we now need keystroke sound jammers.  Shouldn't be too 
hard to implement if you have a good random noise generator, but it could 
get annoying if you play white/pink noise while a password prompt pops up.

Of course, there's still the issue of the pinhole camera in the ceiling 
tiles aimed at your keyboard, but that's old hat. :)

I wonder if different users hit the keys in a different enough way to make 
any difference...


http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid14_gci963348,00.html

'Whispering keyboards' could be next attack trend
By Niall McKay, Contributing Writer
11 May 2004 | SearchSecurity.com
	

OAKLAND -- Listen to this: Eavesdroppers can decipher what is typed by 
simply listening to the sound of a keystroke, according to a scientist at 
this week's IEEE Symposium of Security and Privacy in Oakland, Calif.

Each key on computer keyboards, telephones and even ATM machines makes a 
unique sound as each key is depressed and released, according to a paper 
entitled "Keyboard Acoustic Emanations" presented Monday by IBM research 
scientist Dmitri Asonov.

All that is needed is about $200 worth of microphones and sound processing 
and PC neural networking software.

Today's keyboard, telephone keypads, ATM machines and even door locks have 
a rubber membrane underneath the keys.

"This membrane acts like a drum, and each key hits the drum in a different 
location and produces a unique frequency or sound that the neural 
networking software can decipher," said Asonov. 

<SNIP>