Reminds me of an episode of Due South (the tv series about a Canadian mountie working as a detective in Chicago) in which he correctly works out a password from just the sound of someone typing it.<p>Turns out this is not so far-fetched after all:<p>"If you have an audio recording of somebody typing on an ordinary computer keyboard for fifteen minutes or so, you can figure out everything they typed."<p><a href="https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/acoustic-snooping-typed-information/" rel="nofollow">https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/acoustic-snooping-...</a>
The problem is that the company who's saying "Trust us, we have 128 bit encryption in our product" isn't giving you enough information to make an informed decision about how secure the device really is.<p>Choosing a keyboard because the box says "128 bit encryption" doesn't help if the manufacturer bakes in the same key on every device. Or a predictable key. Or really, any static session key even if it varies by device serial number or something like that. And a marketing or advertising guy doesn't know this, they just see a checkbox they can stick on the artwork. "Just get that 128 bit stuff in there so we aren't lying" is the most likely scenario for something like a keyboard, where competition is tough and margins are wafer thin.<p>Personally I'd use copper if I was at all worried, because the likelihood of some random firmware engineer getting a security protocol right is pretty slim.
> Some time ago, I needed to find a new wireless keyboard. With the level of digital paranoia that I have, my main priority was security.<p>If <i>my main priority was security</i>, then I would never even think about wireless (network, keyboard, etc.).
So how far can you go and still eavesdrop on the signal? I haven't the first clue regarding signals, but I guess you'd have to plant a bug on the underside of the desk as opposed to a radar dish on the other side of the wall?<p>But yeah, another post from windytan that's left me amazed. If you're uninitiated, this is the same woman that figured out how to read from bus timetable display radio signals [1].<p>I'll stick to my USB wired keyboard for now, though, until encrypted wireless keyboards come down from £70-100.<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.windytan.com/2013/11/decoding-radio-controlled-bus-stop.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.windytan.com/2013/11/decoding-radio-controlled-bu...</a>
This is why Apple's iBeacon was <i>never</i> going to be a viable method of payment, unlike NFC. The range on Bluetooth is just too long to safely do something like payments with it.