Mute Your Mic

I generally try to keep my microphone off when on a meetings, partially because I never know what chaos is going to happen in my household with two kids and a dog, but as of today I have a new reason. According to some recent security research, it is possible to steal passwords and other sensitive data from a computer using just the sound of keystrokes over a Zoom call. While the hack has been theoretically possible, the latest research claims up to a 95% accuracy rate.

While there are definitely some holes open questions in the research paper, such as the number of distinct people typing in both the training and testing data sets, it is still a good reminder that while these attacks are still little more than theoretical they will continue to become more practical. So while I won’t change my behavior due to this, it’s only because I already am on mute most of the time. AI will continue to accelerate and improve attacks like this, so training yourself to default to secure behavior is one way to stay ahead.

references

• research paper
• Sophos Naked Security

• infosec
• side-channel attacks
• ai