New Computer Spying

Don't look now but the word from the BBC and the Security and Cryptography Laboratory at the Swiss Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) is that a new form of computer spying has become possible. A project by two graduate students at the EPFL has shown that it is possible to tell what keystrokes a person is making from a distance of up to fifty feet away by measuring the electromagnetic radiation emitted by keystrokes with a radio antennae. The students demonstrated the effectiveness of their test on twelve different keyboard models, including embedded laptop keyboards. (Perhaps the countermeasures developed by the NSA to fight Van Eck phreaking will also work for keyboards.)