Re:Smartphones' accelerometer can track strokes on nearby ke...
by shabble on Tuesday October 18, 2011 @11:14PM
(#3128446)
Also the rather neat Information Leakage from Optical Emanations[1], which demonstrated the ability to read data from networking equipment based on the state of the Rx/Tx LEDs on the front panel. In a lot of cases, the LEDs were being updated for individual bits sent and received.
I can't remember where I came across it, but there was a vendor with an advisory of something like "Mitigation Strategy: Cover Indicator LEDs with light-insulating tape".
Edit: Just remembered about the demo of an attack against signals radiated by (non-wireless) keyboard leads, and their detection and decoding: http://lasecwww.epfl.ch/keyboard/
[1] http://applied-math.org/acm_optical_tempest.pdf (PDF, obviously)
Other examples of (mostly) passive information gathering:
- screens can be read via electromagnetic emissions (at least CRTs could, I don't know about LCD displays these days)
- listening in to a room by bouncing a laser off of a window
- wifi snooping, cell snooping (both obvious)
- car tracking via the rfids embedded in some tires
- person and passport tracking via the rfids in the newest generation of passports (and credit cards)
- printer signature tracking of documents - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3753886.stm (old, don't know how much it's advanced)
- the wide world of temporal correlation attacks (both on social networks and in the physical world with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilateration)
I got a bit sidetracked there. But yea, this is yet another one for the list. Of course, if you've hacked into the phone, you could also try breaking into any wifi networks or, you know, recording conversations.