Shoulder surfing for passwords by ear

[Jack Lloyd]

On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 09:32:40AM -0400, Sunder wrote:

> 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.
[...]

> 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. 

I wonder if my Model M keyboards (which have individual electrical/mechanical
switches under each key) are vulnerable to this attack. It is pretty noisy, I
can imagine that the noise of each key's switch is sufficiently different (due
to wear, etc) that it would still work with modifications.

-J