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#335751 14th Jul 2009 10:36am
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For the geeks smile

Power sockets can be used to eavesdrop on what people type on a computer.

Security researchers found that poor shielding on some keyboard cables means useful data can be leaked about each character typed.

By analysing the information leaking onto power circuits, the researchers could see what a target was typing.

The attack has been demonstrated to work at a distance of up to 15m, but refinement may mean it could work over much longer distances.

Hotel attack

"Our goal is to show that information leaks in the most unexpected ways and can be retrieved," wrote Andrea Barisani and Daniele Bianco, of security firm Inverse Path, in a paper describing their work.

The research focused on the cables used to connect PS/2 keyboards to desktop PCs.

Usefully, said the pair, the six wires inside a PS/2 cable are typically "close to each other and poorly shielded". This means that information travelling along the data wire, when a key is pressed, leaks onto the earth (ground in the US) wire in the same cable.

The earth wire, via the PC's power unit, ultimately connects to the plug in the power socket, and from there information leaks out onto the circuit supplying electricity to a room.

Even better, said the researchers, data travels along PS/2 cables one bit at a time and uses a clock speed far lower than any other PC component. Both these qualities make it easy to pick out voltage changes caused by key presses.

A digital oscilloscope was used to gather data about voltage changes on a power line and filters were used to remove those caused by anything other than the keyboard.

"The PS/2 signal square wave is preserved with good quality... and can be decoded back to the original keystroke information," wrote the pair in a paper describing their work.

They demonstrated it working over distances of 1, 5, 10 and 15m from a target, far enough to suggest it could work in a hotel or office.

"The test performed in the laboratory represent a worst case scenario for this type of measurement, which along with acceptable results emphasizes the feasibility of the attack on normal conditions," they added.

The pair said their research was "work in progress" and expect the equipment to get more sensitive as it is refined.

The attack is due to be demonstrated at the Black Hat conference that takes place in Las Vegas from 25-30 July.

Source

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seems abit far fetcvhed really, I mean say u have several computers in an office or building how could you isolate each one? I would have thought other high security information technology systems would have run on a protected power source too. Recording studios use a technology called "earth lift" or floating earth as do some theatre installations.
purfec

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I've done this using a radio connected to another computer. Computers generate tons of radio cr*d but chosing the right frequency and they can tell you loads.

In the days of storing programs on cassettes you could receive that from an adjacent radio as well. I could do some stuff jsut by listening to it, I was a morse code operator and a musician which is why I tried - there was always a speed challenge with morse!

Luckily most stuff is too fast these days and hence has a wide bandwidth that overlaps with other stuff making it more difficult to isolate what you want, but not mpossible, just less accuracy.


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Nice to see the beeb are keeping up to date with technology and reporting on security problems that were discovered as recently as 1972 wink


If it's stupid and it works, it ain't stupid.
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my internet is sent through the mains with a convertor from pc world, so I firmly belive this is possible.


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One of the oldesst tricks in the book.. Also if you know how.. Connect a scanner to the computer find certain frequencies and you can eavesdrop on the old pager some people still use it today.. Yep you can read peoples pager info lol smile


Lee Mills


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