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A Practical Deep Learning-Based Acoustic Side Channel Attack on Keyboards (arxiv.org)
2 points by Tomte on Oct 1, 2023 | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: A neural network listens to laptop typing sounds through a nearby phone microphone and guesses which key was pressed. Trained on phone recordings it got 95% of keys right, and 93% when the sounds came through Zoom, beating earlier sound-only attacks.

Abstract

With recent developments in deep learning, the ubiquity of micro-phones and the rise in online services via personal devices, acoustic side channel attacks present a greater threat to keyboards than ever. This paper presents a practical implementation of a state-of-the-art deep learning model in order to classify laptop keystrokes, using a smartphone integrated microphone. When trained on keystrokes recorded by a nearby phone, the classifier achieved an accuracy of 95%, the highest accuracy seen without the use of a language model. When trained on keystrokes recorded using the video-conferencing software Zoom, an accuracy of 93% was achieved, a new best for the medium. Our results prove the practicality of these side channel attacks via off-the-shelf equipment and algorithms. We discuss a series of mitigation methods to protect users against these series of attacks.

Joshua Harrison, Ehsan Toreini, Maryam Mehrnezhad
arXiv:2308.01074 · cs.CR, cs.LG · submitted Aug 2, 2023
abstract · pdf · html · This paper was already accepted in 2023 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshop, SiLM'23 (EuroS&PW)

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