Research paper is here: http://www.tau.ac.il/~tromer/papers/acoustic-20131218.pdf
Edited to add: This is one hell of a hack.
Meh, sensationalist title.
Already commented on the first submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6933678
Being hugely pedantic, the "world's toughest encryption" is a one-time pad, and they didn't crack that.
Previous discussion on HN (270 points | 89 comments)
(Notably about why playing music does not mitigate the threat.)
There is a patch for that in GnuPG, available in both Debian and Ubuntu. Update your machines :)
FLOSS is amazing. One day since research paper and your machines are already patched. This means that probably no one had enough time to actually use this attack vector in the wild.
This is possible because of the electromagnetic signature generated by the processor's clock circuit while it is decrypting the data. The microphone is listening to the EM signal generated by the clock and timing the samples to reconstruct what the processor was doing. This type of attack is very difficult to carry out against a completely asynchronous or self-timed circuit that doesn't generate timed samples due to the lack of any central clock.
these people, to me, are indistinguishable from wizards.
>or you need to use a “sufficiently strong wide-band noise
>source.” Something like a swooping, large-orchestra
>classical concerto would probably do it.
Perhaps this can be thwarted by adding randomization to algorithm implementations so calculations are performed in different order every time.
So, would running something else on the same CPU (getting the load to 100%) mitigate this issue?
TL;DR: Paranoid? Turn on Metallica up to eleven when decrypting data
s/crack/bypassed/
Can extremetech please be added to the list of websites blocked by default on HN.
There is never any original content from that site, it's always rehashed crap, littered with buzzwords and reeking of the dead corpse of journalistic integrity.