Keytap2
Security and privacy
acoustic keyboard eavesdropping
SHOW HN2020
How HN took it
7 positive, 9 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 3 critical, out of 19 comments about the project. Thread score +0.21.
Privacy: 1 for, 2 againstExecution: 3 for, 0 againstPerformance: 1 for, 1 againstIdea: 2 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Works impressively well in testing.
From 2 comments
This works incredibly well. I hope you realize what you've created (and made available to every person in the world).
ffpip on HNI just tried it and it works incredibly well. It kind of makes me want to stop using a mechanical keyboard.
Raphmedia on HN
Important security research that raises awareness.
From 2 comments
It's important work, thanks! Don't let people like me being afraid of a bad actors stop the process of publicizing exploits if it leads to a safer future :)
seveibar on HNI believe the technology has existed for quite some time. I think perhaps the idea was even mentioned in Cryptonomicon. So I think that making it more available/open should…
SamBam on HN
Objections
Enables easy eavesdropping on typing and lowers the barrier for attackers.
From 3 comments
This works incredibly well. I hope you realize what you've created (and made available to every person in the world).
ffpip on HNI believe the technology has existed for quite some time. I think perhaps the idea was even mentioned in Cryptonomicon. So I think that making it more available/open should…
SamBam on HNThis is a bit scary for coding livestreamers who may have to answer the call from sudo now and again. I'm curious how the maintainer feels about the usage of this application.…
seveibar on HN
Requests
Use spectrogram or wavelet analysis instead of raw waveform comparison.
From 3 comments
Hey. I've been working on an audio recognition tool that is remarkably similar to this one, and there are a few areas I strongly recommend exploring if you want to improve the…
cnity on HNI don't recommend using DFT (FFT) analysis unless you can constrain N to small sizes (<= 256 at 44.1KHz sampling rate perhaps) to reduce time aliasing. Use of wavelets may be a…
waffletower on HNThe uncertainty principle is is the key concept that I think is relevant here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle#Harmonic_analysis A Discrete Fourier Transform…
waffletower on HN
Use higher sample rate than 16kHz.
From 2 comments
If you want to compute an FFT with fewer bins you can also use STFT and configure the bin count and hop size (essentially computing many FFTs of smaller regions of the signal and…
cnity on HNI agree, 44.1KHz is a commonly available sampling rate and could provide better temporal resolution regardless of time doamin and frequency domain analysis technique you decide…
waffletower on HN
Questions
How does the maker feel about misuse, and what drove development?
From 1 comment
This is a bit scary for coding livestreamers who may have to answer the call from sudo now and again. I'm curious how the maintainer feels about the usage of this application.…
seveibar on HN
Alternatives named
Prior keyboard acoustic attack research and password cracking via keyboard acoustics.
From 2 comments
You may find this interesting - the technique has been used before to do unsupervised recovery of keystrokes: "Cracking Passwords using Keyboard Acoustics and Language Modeling"…
redgiraffe on HNWell known since at least 2004 https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~genkin/teaching/fall2018/EECS598-12_files/kbdacoustic.pdf…
zerd on HN