Sniff Keystrokes with Lasers/Voltmeters: Side Channel Attacks presented at ShakaCon 2009
by Andrea Barisani, Daniele Bianco,
Summary : 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.