Hackers have no shortage of tools in their arsenal to break into your device and steal your data. You may be familiar with many of them, such as viruses, malware, phishing scams, and other strategies they use. However, IT researchers have recently discovered that cybercriminals are now able to listen to your password. Understand this new threat and how you can protect yourself in this article.
It’s Not the Usual Type of Listening
Don’t expect hackers to be sitting around in a van outside your home or office with advanced surveillance equipment. It’s not even somebody sitting nearby you hoping you say your password out loud as you type it. In fact, the attack is much more sophisticated. Instead, hackers can use phones to record the sound of keystrokes typed on a computer.
From here, they use advanced software which can translate the sound waves into a fairly accurate estimation of what keys they were typing. Researcher Eric Larson, who conducted a study on this phenomenon, noted that hackers would be able to determine the keys with approximately 41% accuracy. Although that might not sound like a lot, that’s more than enough for hackers to combine this information with datasets like the 10,000 most common passwords to break into people’s accounts.
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How Do the Attacks Work?
All mobiles have sensors that not only detect whether they are in motion, in a pocket, or their orientation. In most cases, these sensors are always on and used for a wide variety of purposes on your smartphone. During the study, Professor Larson’s team tested the variety of ways phones could be used to track keystrokes.
The study involved a group of people all talking in a large room with several smartphones kept within a range of between a few inches and a few feet from their computers. Even in this noisy environment, smartphones were able to pick up the sounds and could be successfully decoded.
Cybercriminals can use these techniques in a variety of ways. They may just put a phone near your computer to record the keyboard sounds. However, more advanced attacks could include malware that remotely hacks into your phone’s microphone and secretly records audio from there. Moreover, there’s a potential for these attacks to grow more complex, so all computer users need to be aware of this danger.
How Can You Protect Yourself?
Password security is important not just to protect yourself against these types of attacks, but from the many other cybersecurity threats. You can begin by enabling two-step verification on your accounts. With two-step verification, your online account may send you a text message or email with a one-time code that you must enter each time you log in. You can also use biometric security technologies, such as fingerprint identification and facial recognition technology. These tools greatly enhance your security.
However, for the greatest combination of security and convenience, you should use a password manager. Password managers like NordPass use the latest technology to help you securely and easily access your online accounts. You can use it to generate unique, virtually unbreakable passwords for each login. Most importantly, everything is done on the screen.
This means there’s no sound for hackers to pick up using smartphones. Moreover, this also protects against keyloggers—another type of malware that records your keystrokes. Finally, NordPass comes with additional features such as browser integration and its signature “effortless input” technology that lets you put in your credentials in no time at all.
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Secure Yourself Against the Latest Cybersecurity Threat
Hackers will always innovate new ways to steal your data. Now, they are able to use smartphones to listen to keystrokes to guess passwords. However, you can protect yourself from this threat, along with many others through using NordPass’s advanced password management technology.
With NordPass, you can store all your passwords and other important data securely with the most advanced security technology. Best of all, it’s easy to use and will not only make your accounts safer but also simpler for you to access. What can be better than that?