[gregrata]

"typed by intercepting side-channel signals produced by the first laptop’s keyboard software, which had been modified to make the characters easier to identify."

So they modified the keyboard to make it easy to detect what was typed? Not saying side-channel isn't a issue, but that's kinda silly :)

[unreal37]

Actually, this shows that intercepting the password entered from either audio or electronic signals from the other side of a wall is possible. It's just a matter of perfecting the technology to intercept it.

Like, if I can read Chinese as long as the strokes are clearly made, you can say that I can read Chinese. Now it's just a matter of increasing error correction to remove the qualifier.

It's only a matter of budget to be able to read the keyboard characters without modifying the driver.

[stewartbutler]

> keyboard software

Sounds to me like they modified the driver so that it had some kind of emissions pattern they could track. Driver could be modified via a virus or something.

[unreal37]

Let's say your computer emits a inaudible signal at 4.127Hz when the A key is pressed, 4.131Hz when the B key is pressed, etc. There is a unique signal emitted for each key.

It sounds like they just modified the driver to make those signals easier to detect. (i.e. A became 4Hz, B became 4.1Hz, etc.) If they had more sensitive detectors, maybe they wouldn't need to modify the driver.

My guess.

[clearf]

If you could modify the driver, you may not need to rely on the subtlety of the emissions patterns...