Gearfuse

Two doctoral students, Martin Vuagnoux and Sylvain Pasini from the Security and Cryptography Laboratory at the Swiss Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, have discovered a potential threat to security that declares keyboards “unsafe to transmit sensitive information”.

By monitoring signals produced by keystrokes, the researchers were able to reproduce what had been typed on 11 different keyboards using a variety of different attacks. One specific attack worked as far away as 20 meters from the keyboard. The next time you find yourself exchanging top secret information with someone on the Internet, you best watch what you type; the KGB could be monitoring your keystrokes.

Link [via]

Here’s a great way to eavesdrop on an unknowing sap’s conversation. Objects in Flux’s Scott Mitchell has turned a vintage lamp into a parabolic microphone for recording. It’s got volume control and a headphone socket mounted in the lamps base. This way, no one other than the headphone wearer gets to hear the goods. And by goods I mean the sound of your roommate banging away the night.

The whole project is powered by a 9V battery, which is fitted inside the lamp shade, out of site out of mind. While it does amplify the sound, it suffers in performance due to the small size of the parabolic dish. Mitchell provides circuit diagrams and instructions for the project, perhaps you’d like to make your own, more effective, lamp microphone?

Link (via)

While it looks to be as easy as strapping a stethoscope to a stick, the Neighbor Rod is a tool used for looking creepy and eavesdropping on your friends, family, and neighbors, without them being any the wiser to your intentions.

Oddly enough, the Neighbor Rod can also be used to knock on the wall, we guess to ask for silence. Well now, that isn’t very neighborly is it? — Andrew Dobrow

Link [via]