Your Phone’s Microphone Can Be Used To Hack Your Passwords; Sound Of Your Keystrokes While Typing Is Vulnerable!

Everyday, we get to hear different incidents of online hacking or invasion of privacy. The truth is with the advancement of technology, hackers and their hacking techniques are getting more and more sophisticated. It has now come to our notice that today, hackers can  crack your online passwords  by just listening to the sound of your keystrokes!

If that doesn’t give you chills then you need to dig deeper and understand the whole procedure well. Apparently, hackers can work out your password by simply listening to the typing sound and it results in “remarkable accuracy”. This can be done even when you are sitting in a bus or a coffee shop, or a noisy environment.

Study Conducted by Texas College

It is found that hackers were able to detect what was being typed with remarkable accuracy using just a smartphone. This would obviously prove to be a major threat to people who use laptop computers in public places like coffee shops, libraries and on public transport.

In tests conducted by researchers and cybersecurity experts from Southern Methodist University in Texas , it was found that sound waves produced when we type on a computer keyboard can successfully be picked up by a smartphone. Mobile phones contain sensors to detect orientation and whether it is sitting still on a table or being carried in someone’s pocket. Some sensors require the user to give permission to switch them on, but many are always on.

The acoustic signals intercepted by the phone can then be processed, allowing a skilled hacker to decipher which keys were struck and what they were typing. When tested by the researchers, they were able to decode passwords and what was being typed, just by using common keyboards and smartphones , even in a  noisy conference room. The rate of accuracy was more than 41% and this takes only some seconds.

Creating a Real-Life Scenario

To understand the gravity of the situation, the researchers arranged several people in a conference room, talking to each other and taking notes on a laptop. These people had kept their phones on the same table as that of the laptop, some  three inches to several feet feet away from the computer.

It was found that the phone could sense each and every keyword being typed on the keyboard very easily. According to a Professor dealing with such situations, smartphone makers will have to make sure that they are enhancing the privacy with which people have access to these sensors in a smartphone. A successful interception of this sort could potentially be very scary because there’s no way to know if you’re being hacked this way.