ICS News Archive

Your body heat can help attackers steal your password in new attack

If you’re typing your password on a computer keyboard, you’re leaving heat traces behind that could be picked up by hackers. By using a thermal imaging camera and scanning your computer keyboard after you typed your password, researchers at the University of California, Irvine discovered that key presses can be recovered as late as 30 seconds after the first key was pressed with off-the-shelf solutions from FLIR. The researchers published their findings on attacks by thermal imaging in a paper titled “Thermanator.”

“Although thermal residue dissipates over time, there is always a certain time window during which thermal energy readings can be harvested from input devices to recover recently entered, and potentially sensitive, information,” the researchers wrote.

Read the full story at KSWO.