AI Understands Your Keyboard: Why It Matters for Your Security

AI Can Understand Keyboard Sounds: How It Affects Your Security

A team of computer experts from the UK have created a special kind of artificial intelligence (AI) program or you can say AI model. This AI can understand the sounds that a keyboard makes when someone types on it. The experts did their work on a common laptop called a MacBook Pro, the kind that many people use. The team doing this project includes Joshua Harrison from Durham University, Ehsan Toreini from the University of Surrey, and Maryam Mehrnezhad from Royal Holloway University of London.

According to a study by Cornell University, this AI program might help hackers take people’s passwords very accurately. The AI “listens” to the sounds when someone types on the keyboard without them knowing. Then, the AI can figure out the secret codes people use to access their accounts. The researchers tried out the AI on a nearby smartphone and were able to guess the typed passwords correctly about 95% of the time. Even in a video call, the AI could hear the typing sounds through the laptop’s microphone and guess the passwords with 93% accuracy. This kind of attack is called a “keyboard sound attack.”

In a keyboard sound attack, hackers use the sounds of typing to break into people’s accounts. The researchers warned that many people don’t know about the dangers of this kind of attack. They explained that the sounds of typing are easy to find and use, so hackers can easily do this kind of attack. Also, people often don’t realize that the sounds their keyboard makes can give away their passwords, even if they’re careful about hiding their screen while typing.

To see if the AI program works well, the researchers tested it a lot. They pressed 36 keys on the laptop 25 times each, trying different ways of pressing the keys. But the AI program was still able to understand the different parts of the typing sounds, like the waves of sound they make. Even when they tested it with a smartphone (an iPhone 13 mini) placed 17 centimeters away from the keyboard, the AI could still recognize the sounds of typing.

This study shows that the noises a keyboard makes can have big effects on security, and it reminds us to be careful and protect our private information from these types of sneaky attacks.