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Talk:Acoustic cryptanalysis

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History[edit]

While the research of Dmitri Asonov and Rakesh Agrawal is very intresting, it's not really cryptoanalysis but more keylogging, so I don't think that they should be mentioned here as the first thing. The more intresting research is the research from Adi Shamir and Eran Tromer, which is more side channel and cryptoanalysis in nature than the first imho. (edit: oops, this was me) --Soyweiser 10:38, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, great article, up to date.

After noticing the acoustic emissions used for side-channel attack described as humming, I thought a little background on what's going on here (the physics) might help the article and readers. We've got components radiating at 38KHz when digital pulse trains go through, not 60 Hz line hum. How can this happen? The new paragraph:
Acoustic emissions occur in coils and capacitors because of small movements when a current surge passes through them. Capacitors in particular change diameter slightly as their many layers experience electrostatic attraction/repulsion or piezoelectric size change [6]. A coil or capacitor which emits acoustic noise will, conversely, also be microphonic, and the high-end audio industry takes steps with coils [7] and capacitors [8] to reduce these microphonics (emissions) because they can muddy a hi-fi amplifier's sound.
Hope everyone likes it. I did not say that the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) on which the components may be mounted acts like a sounding board to amplify the emissions. Also, don't tell anyone, but the secret for stabilizing large polypropylene or mylar capacitors for high-end audio gear -- to kill either the emissions or the microphonics, whatever your game -- is to dip them into liquid nitrogen. The wrenching thermal contraction locks the layers against all movements driven by electrostatic forces. Too bad I have no reference -- this is lab lore, keep it to yourself. Finally, those piezo effects are mostly in ceramic capacitors, not the polypropylene/Mylar ones.

Best regards.
Jerry-VA (talk) 19:06, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• This is a good addition, thanks! — Dsimic (talk) 21:14, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Regarding coils they emit noise due to Magnetostriction — Rainbowbadger (talk) 19:57, 21 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the section "In March 2015, it was made public that some inkjet printers using ultrasonic heads can be read back using high frequency MEMS microphones" I'm struggling to find any papers pertaining to such attacks on inkjet printers. Rainbowbadger (talk) 19:51, 21 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! The best source I could find is this one, but it doesn't confirm such a scenario for ink-jet printers. Thus, that statement in the article should be marked with {{Citation needed}} and deleted in a few weeks if nobody provides a source. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 21:44, 21 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

 I have verified that the article that can be found here https://www.frdafonseca.com/papers/4/index.html predates the ones that are mentioned on the acoustic cryptanalysis page. In this way, I would like if you could evaluate its merit, in order to mention it on the corresponding wikipedia page.

 Its abstract reads as follows:

 Printers have their efficiency enhanced by being programmed not to move their print head to locations of the paper's printing area where information is not printed. Owing to this, relations can be established between the path that the print head takes to print some document (printing path) and the printed information. If the attacker is capable of acquiring the data that characterizes the printing path, for instance, through side-channels, then the latter relations may be very valuable into helping him into guessing the printed information. For this attack to be feasible, the printed information must be characterized by an unique printing path. This is, the printing path taken by each one of the possible values that are printed by the protocol to attack must be distinguishable from the other ones. A protocol in which this requirement is verified is the electronic election's protocol, in case Paper Verifiable Audit Trails (PVATs) are used. Successfully attacking this protocol opens the door to vote coercion, intimidation, and vote selling. To make this alert sound, examples of this attack are shown here. To prevent it, some countermeasures are proposed here.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by JavierBardier (talk • contribs) 09:21, 7 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]