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DetlefK

(16,423 posts)
Fri Dec 20, 2013, 08:06 AM Dec 2013

Stealing a password from the sound your laptop makes.

http://www.tau.ac.il/~tromer/papers/acoustic-20131218.pdf
(warning: very long read)

A computer makes particular sounds that depend on the software that is running at that very moment. Israeli scientists were able to decipher from those sounds what the computer is actually doing.
By sending a test-E-Mail (encrypted with a public key for GnuPG) to a laptop and recording the sounds that it made upon decoding it, the scientists were able to reproduce the private key the laptop used to decrypt it. It took them just an hour.

This security-leak has already been fixed.
http://security-world.blogspot.de/2013/12/security-dsa-2821-1-gnupg-security.html

It's nevertheless better not to read E-Mails while a stranger's cellphone lies next to your laptop...
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Stealing a password from the sound your laptop makes. (Original Post) DetlefK Dec 2013 OP
Many laptops have microphones intaglio Dec 2013 #1

intaglio

(8,170 posts)
1. Many laptops have microphones
Fri Dec 20, 2013, 08:44 AM
Dec 2013

and I think even the loudspeakers can be used to pick up the sounds in and around a computer.

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