Keyboard Acoustic Emanations Revisited (350 KB PDF file)
by Li Zhuang, Feng Zhou, J.D.Tygar, University of California, Berkeley

This is a preprint of their complete paper to appear in the Proceedings of the 12th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, November 2005.
http://keyboard-emanations.org
This is the official keyboard emanations web site referred to as the end of their ACM preprint paper which will eventually contain the prototype code, in Matlab and Java, of the keyboard emanation sound "attack" and their data sets.
TEMPEST
This page on the Federation of American Scientists web site describes "TEMPEST" and provides additional background and terminology about surveillance technology associated with electromagnetic emissions and emanations from electronic equipment.
The Law Surrounding Emanation Interception
As you can see from this page, it appears that since the sound of keyboard typing is not INTENDED as communication, its interception and use AS communication is not covered by any prevailing laws in the United States, England, or Canada, and is therefore not unlawful.
Links to news coverage of the Zhuang/Zhou/Tygar ACM research:

www.berkeley.edu This is UC Berkeley's official press release: "Researchers recover typed text using audio recording of keystrokes".

www.freedom-to-tinker.com This page ends with a series of forum-style comments that you might find interesting and useful.

sfgate.com Reprint of Dan Fost's article in the San Francisco Chronicle

www.infoworld.com IDG News Service coverage of the story |