New acoustic attack steals data from keystrokes with 95% accuracy::A team of researchers from British universities has trained a deep learning model that can steal data from keyboard keystrokes recorded using a microphone with an accuracy of 95%.
It looks like they only tested one keyboard from a MacBook. I’d be curious if other keyboard styles are as susceptible to the attack. It also doesn’t say how many people’s typing that they listened to. I know mine changes depending on my mood or excitement about something, I’m sure that would affect it.
Coreidan@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’ll believe it when it actually happens. Until then you can’t convince me that an algorithm can tell what letter was typed from hearing the action through a microphone.
This sounds like absolute bullshit to me.
Obsession@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s pretty much what the article says. The model needs to be trained on the target keyboard first, so you won’t just have people hacking you through a random zoom call
bdonvr@thelemmy.club 1 year ago
And if you have the access to train such a model, slipping a keylogger onto the machine would be so much easier
LouNeko@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I think you might have misunderstood the article. In one case they used the sound input from a Zoom meeting and as a reference they used the chat messenges from set zoom meetings. No keyloggers required.
I haven’t read the paper yet, but the article doesn’t go into detail about possible flaws. Like, how would the software differentiate between double assigned symbols on the numpad and the main rows? Does it use spell check to predict words that are not 100% conclusive? What about external keyboards? What if the distance to the microphone changes? What about backspace? People make a lot of mistakes while typing. How would the program determine if something was deleted if it doesn’t show up in the text? Etc.
I have no doubt that under lab conditions a recognition rate of 93% is realistic, but I doubt that this is applicable in the real world. Noboby sits in a video conference quietly typing away at their keyboard. A single uttered word can throw of your whole training data. Most importantly, all video or audio call apps or programs have an activation threshold for the microphone enabled by default to save on bandwith. Typing is mostly below that threshold. Any other means of collecting the data will require you to have access to the device to a point where installing a keylogger is easier.
imaradio@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
It sounds like it would have to be a very targeted attack. Like if the CIA is after you this might be a concern.
Ironfist@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I’m skeptical too, it sounds very hard to do with the sound alone, but lets assume that part works.
The keylogger part could be done with a malicious website that activates the microphone and asks the user to input whatever. The site would know what you typed and how it sounded. Then that information could be used against you even when you are not in the malicious website.
Imgonnatrythis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Hard to do, but with a very standard keyboard like a Mac keyboard the resonance signatures should be slightly different based on location on the board, take into account pattern recognition, relative pause length between keystrokes, and perhaps some forced training ( ie. Get them to type know words like a name and address to feed algorithm) I think it’s potentially possible.
HankMardukas@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s bad now, but where we’re at with AI… It’s like complaining that MS paint in 1992 couldn’t make photorealistic fake images. This will only get better, never worse. Improvements will come quickly.
egeres@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Is gonna sound crazy, but I think you can skip the keylogger step!
You could make a “keystroke-sound-language-model” (so like a language model that combines various modalities, e.g, flamingo), then train that with self-supervised learning to match “audio” with “text”, and have a system where:
I think it’s very narrow to think that, just because this research case requires a keylogger, these systems couldn’t evolve other time to combine other techniques
ItsMeSpez@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Sounds like a fantastic way to target a streamer, but it’s otherwise very limited.