Sniff Keystrokes With Lasers/Voltmeters - Side Channel Attacks Using
Optical Sampling Of Mechanical Energy And Power Line Leakage
Abstract
TEMPEST attacks, exploiting Electro Magnetic emissions in order to gather data,
are often mentioned by the security community, movies and wanna-be spies (or
NSA employees we guess...).
While some expensive attacks, especially the ones against CRT/LCD monitors,
have been fully researched and described, some others remain relatively unknown
and haven't been fully (publicly) researched.
Following the overwhelming success of the SatNav Traffic Channel hijacking talk
we continue with the tradition of presenting cool and cheap hardware hacking
projects.
We will explore two unconventional approaches for remotely sniffing keystrokes
on laptops and desktop computers using mechanical energy emissions and power
line leakage. The only thing you need for successful attacks are either the
electrical grid or a distant line of sight, no expensive piece of equipment is
required.
We will show in detail the two attacks and all the necessary instructions for
setting up the equipment. As usual cool gear and videos are going to be
featured in order to maximize the presentation.