Security News > 2024 > March > New acoustic attack determines keystrokes from typing patterns
Researchers have demonstrated a new acoustic side-channel attack on keyboards that can deduce user input based on their typing patterns, even in poor conditions, such as environments with noise.
The attack leverages the distinctive sound emissions of different keystrokes and the typing pattern of users captured by specialized software to gather a dataset.
The captured dataset includes typing samples under various conditions, so multiple typing sessions must be recorded, which is crucial for the attack's success.
The dataset is then used to train a statistical model that produces a comprehensive profile of the target's individual typing patterns based on the time intervals between keystrokes.
The researchers found that accepting a 5% deviation for the statistical model is crucial, as typing behavior varies slightly even when a person types the same word twice.
New acoustic attack steals data from keystrokes with 95% accuracy.