Our biggest fears have been realized. Terrorist groups no longer find satisfaction in just blowing themselves up, now there are reports of terrorists being trained to make detonators out of SEGA games. The terrorists have gone too far. Taking apart classic games for use in terrorist activities is not only a disservice to retro collectors all around the world but also threatens everyday gamers like myself.
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.
