Hearing Passwords

Apparently, some computer scientists at the University of California Berkeley have found a way to decipher what your password with a computer, simply by hearing it. When they typed a 10 digit password combination, the computer returned 75 different possibilities. What that means, is that they should be able to break 1 out of every 75 people’s passwords on the very first try. I don’t know about you, but I find that pretty frightening. Here are a few articles on the subject.

• Researchers Recover Typed Text
• Careful or they’ll hear
• Each Tap Divulges Secret
• Keyboard Click Now Security Threat

In addition to having your password heard, I also ran across an article from PCWorld from a couple of years ago that discusses security vulnerabilities using a wireless keyboard. From that March edition in 2003, Andrew Brandt states “Input devices that share a radio frequency can also share keystroke information across surprisingly long distances.” Anyway, who would’ve thought that there were a couple of ways like this to have your password picked up by simply typing.