I read an article from the BBC News. Some researchers found a way to read computer keyboard presses using a radio antenna. It detects the radiation from the keystrokes. It can then determine which keys were pressed. This is all supposedly possible using cheap hardware. Unfortunately the details of the hack were sparse. I imagine there will be more details posted later when they actually publish their research.This was done by some PhD students at a security and cryptography lab. They were part of a Swiss university. It sounds like interesting research for students. It must be nice to have the time to research this stuff. The big deal is that this is yet another way that criminals might be able to snoop on what you are doing on your computer without your knowledge.
You can think of this as a hardware key logger that does not need to be physically connected to your computer. The researchers did give some tidbits of information about their research. They stated that they have 4 attack vectors in which to guess the keystrokes you are pressing. I think I want to follow this story more carefully. Any strong coder can write a secret application that logs keystrokes if this rogue application is installed on the victim’s computer. However this latest hack is describing some snooping at a distance. Nice.
