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Researchers Find Way to Spy on Remote Screens -- Through the Webcam Mic

posted by janrinok on Wednesday August 29 2018, @08:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the stop-whining-we-can-see-you dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Daniel Genkin of the University of Michigan, Mihir Pattani of the University of Pennsylvania, Roei Schuster of Cornell Tech and Tel Aviv University, and Eran Tromer of Tel Aviv University and Columbia University investigated a potential new avenue of remote surveillance that they have dubbed "Synesthesia"[1]: a side-channel attack that can reveal the contents of a remote screen, providing access to potentially sensitive information based solely on "content-dependent acoustic leakage from LCD screens."

The research, supported by the Check Point Institute for Information Security at Tel Aviv University[2] (of which Schuster and Tromer are members) and funded in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, examined what amounts to an acoustic form of Van Eck phreaking. While Van Eck phreaking uses radio signal emissions that leak from display connectors, the Synesthesia research leverages "coil whine," the audio emissions from transformers and other electronic components powering a device's LCD display.

source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/08/researchers-find-way-to-spy-on-remote-screens-through-the-webcam-mic/
archived: https://archive.fo/ZmO62

[1] https://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~tromer/synesthesia/synesthesia.pdf & https://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~tromer/synesthesia/
[2] http://cpiis.cs.tau.ac.il/

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @09:34PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @09:34PM (#728026)

    Except that isn't actually needed if you aren't trying to read pixels which are changing every refresh.

    Generally the most important thing to someone spying on you will be text. Text tends to have decent contrast, and the pixels tend to change very infrequently. So it is completely conceivable that some kind of statistical averaging could be done over a large number of frames, which would reveal the text being displayed.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by requerdanos on Wednesday August 29 2018, @10:10PM (2 children)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 29 2018, @10:10PM (#728034) Journal

    most important thing to someone spying on you will be text.

    We have determined that your password is:

    *******

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday August 29 2018, @10:55PM (1 child)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday August 29 2018, @10:55PM (#728053) Journal

      It's hunter2, it just looks like ******* to everyone else =p

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...