From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Aug 19 09:11:30 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C9A4E106568C; Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:11:30 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from des@des.no) Received: from tim.des.no (tim.des.no [194.63.250.121]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8B9778FC43; Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:11:30 +0000 (UTC) Received: from ds4.des.no (des.no [84.49.246.2]) by smtp.des.no (Postfix) with ESMTP id 122126D41C; Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:11:29 +0000 (UTC) Received: by ds4.des.no (Postfix, from userid 1001) id CC881844FF; Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:57:44 +0200 (CEST) From: =?utf-8?Q?Dag-Erling_Sm=C3=B8rgrav?= To: David Wagner References: <200908162109.n7GL9JNK029605@taverner.cs.berkeley.edu> Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:57:44 +0200 In-Reply-To: <200908162109.n7GL9JNK029605@taverner.cs.berkeley.edu> (David Wagner's message of "Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:09:19 -0700 (PDT)") Message-ID: <861vn85zvr.fsf@ds4.des.no> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.92 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org, Robert Watson , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Oliver Pinter Subject: Re: Security: information leaks in /proc enable keystroke recovery X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:11:30 -0000 David Wagner writes: > I agree we certainly shouldn't discuss the keystroke recovery attack > as hypothetical, because it is clearly not hypothetical: the authors > implemented it and found that it works. It *is* hypothetical. They were able to collect some keystrokes (but not all) in Linux, but IIUC, all they could do in FreeBSD was figure out whether or not a key was pressed at a certain time (or during a certain interval). They *hypothesize* that the interval between keystrokes can be used to identify the keys being pressed, but they haven't actually done it. I can imagine - purely hypothetically - that it would be possible, but only while the user was typing running text; the parameters would vary greatly from typist to typist, and between keyboard layouts, and you could probably defeat it pretty easily (at least some of the time) by deliberately typing slowly and arythmically, e.g. typing in your password with only one finger. DES --=20 Dag-Erling Sm=C3=B8rgrav - des@des.no