ICS News Archive

Forbes: “Help! Hackers Stole My Password Just By Listening To Me Type On Skype!” (Tsudik research)

For many, everyday life involves sitting in front of a computer typing endless emails, presentation documents and reports. Then there’s the frequent typing of passwords just to get access to those files. But beware: researchers have hacked together a tool that can harvest what’s being typed simply by listening to the sounds of the keys.

They’ve created the Skype&Type program for snooping on Skype users by learning what frequency matches with specific keys on a laptop. And in June Forbes became a guinea pig for the researchers, PhD student Daniele Lain, Prof. Mauro Conti, and Dr. Alberto Compagno from the University of Padua, and Prof. Gene Tsudik from the University of California, Irvine. The headline from the first field test? Their prototype works. And it stole a randomly-chosen password within seconds of us typing it out.

Read the full story at Forbes.