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Using just a smartphone, hackers can listen to what is being typed with remarkable accuracy and access your personal information. According to researchers from Dallas-based Southern Methodist University (SMU), it’s possible to access your information in a subtler way: by using a nearby smartphone to intercept the sound of your typing.
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The team from from SMU’s Darwin Deason Institute for Cybersecurity found that acoustic signals, or sound waves, produced when we type on a computer keyboard can successfully be picked up by a smartphone.
The sounds intercepted by the phone can then be processed, allowing a skilled hacker to decipher which keys were struck and what they were typing.
The researchers were able to decode much of what was being typed using common keyboards and smartphones – even in a noisy conference room filled with the sounds of other people typing and having conversations.
“We were able to pick up what people are typing at a 41 per cent word accuracy rate. And we can extend that out – above 41 per cent – if we look at, say, the top 10 words of what we think it might be,” said Eric C. Larson, assistant professor in SMU Lyle School’s Department of Computer Science.
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