Data Thieves May Take Advantage of Badly Shielded Keyboard Cables

[engine]

Data Thieves May Take Advantage of Badly Shielded Keyboard Cables [news.bbc.co.uk]

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.

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.

[bill]

I heard about this, but it sounded as though capturing the information would not be very practical. You'd almost need to be within line of sight, and as the article says it was only working at 15m.

I remember when the old versions of PGP had a special window you could type into that wouldn't allow your monitor image to be remotely captured. That's never become a very big issue.

[jdMorgan]

I'll bet MI6 is quite annoyed with them for publishing...

Jim

[Tastatura]

most keyboards now-a-days are USB and not PS2

[Tastatura]

coincidentally I just came across this - eat this MI6 :)

diy wireless keylogger

[keelog.com...]

[edited by: encyclo at 12:47 pm (utc) on July 26, 2009]
[edit reason] fixed link [/edit]