AI Tool Can Steal Passwords With 93% Accuracy By Listening To Keystrokes: Study

This vulnerability could expose people to potential cyberattacks.

A new study has revealed that entering your computer password while on a Zoom call could put you at risk for a cyberattack because hackers can now ‘listen’ to your keystrokes to steal your credentials using an artificial intelligence (AI) tool.

The study said that AI has the capability to identify the specific keys being pressed by listening to the typing sounds.

In a paper published on August 3, researchers emphasised that with the increasing adoption of video conferencing platforms like Zoom and the widespread availability of devices equipped with microphones, the risk of sound-based cyberattacks has increased. The AI tool studied by the researchers showed the capacity to accurately decipher text, including passwords, from keystroke sounds, achieving a precision level exceeding 90%.

Researchers from Durham, Surrey, and Royal Holloway universities were involved in the study and illustrated that microphones can identify distinct typing patterns. This revelation implies that people using laptops in public settings might be at risk of having their typing captured and subsequently deciphered.

The team of researchers reached this conclusion after undertaking the task of training an AI model.

They achieved this by pressing each of the 36 keys on a MacBook Pro 25 times while recording the accompanying sounds. Subsequently, they fed this sound data into the AI model, enabling it to accurately recognize the unique pattern associated with each key.

The researchers’ AI model exhibited a remarkable accuracy rate of 93% in interpreting keystrokes from recorded MacBook typing sounds conducted via the Zoom video conferencing software. Additionally, the accuracy rate increased to 95% when the keystrokes were captured using an iPhone 13 mini.

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