Hacking Keyboards using Electro Magnetic Radiations
Friday, October 24, 2008 12:12Isn’t the title of the post geeky enough? Atleast I think so, I never thought of something like this even in my dreams until I came across this research from the Security and Cryptography Laboratory at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne.
Can you just imagine, Everything you type on your keyboard sitting alone in your room on a highly secured PC is still captured by someone else sitting in another room 20 metres away. The technology being experiemented out is compromising the Electro Magnetic Radiations emitted out by a PS/2 , USB or a LAPTOP keyboard. These EMR (electro magnetic radiations) are captured by a receiver and the whole spectrum is analyzed to get the key presses. So, If you are typing an email or a password or your banking account details, some one can still sniff them out without using any spywares or keyloggers.
Although Electro magnetic eavesdropping is not a new stuff and people keep on doing it. But This is some startling finding I could never ever thought of.
The two researchers have outline four separate attack methods, some that work at a distance of as much as 65 feet from the target. And you thought, Even disconnecting the PC from internet makes it secure.. 
Watch out the following two videos demonstrating the hack.
And the second one…
Get the actual paper here…
“COMPROMISING ELECTROMAGNETIC EMANATIONS OF WIRED KEYBOARDS” by Martin Vuagnoux and Sylvain Pasin.
The paper is still under review and not much details are available about it.
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Quote of the Day:Homer: Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.
pal b says:
October 28th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
How about wireless keyboard? I guess they are more hack-able … {my pure assumption}.
Amit Goel says:
October 29th, 2008 at 12:19 am
@pal b
That’s a different topic altogther. Wireless keyboards are definitely vulnerable . But here, I mentioned about wored keyboards about which no one thought also that they can be compromised.
Roger Waldon says:
June 8th, 2010 at 7:07 am
Great article Thank