Sounds from typing could be security risk

I thought that this was very interesting.

“SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Forget about watching, Big Brother may be listening.

Sounds from typing on computer keyboards are distinctive enough to be decoded, allowing security breaches caused by “acoustic snooping,” University of California, Berkeley researchers said on Wednesday.

The researchers said they were able to feed sound recordings of typing on keyboards into a computer and use an algorithm to recover up to 96 percent of the keyboard characters entered by typists.

“It’s a form of acoustical spying that should raise red flags among computer security and privacy experts,” said Doug Tygar, a Berkeley professor of computer science and information management.”