Acoustic Cryptanalysis: Extracting RSA Key From GnuPG by capturing Computer Sound
Dec 20, 2013
' RSA Key Extraction via Low-Bandwidth Acoustic Cryptanalysis ', is an interesting paper recently published by Three Israeli Security Researchers at Tel Aviv University . They claimed that, they have successfully broken one of the most secure encryption algorithms, 4096-bit RSA , just by capturing Computer's CPU Sound while it runs decryption routines. Daniel Genkin, Adi Shamir (who co-invented RSA), and Eran Tromer , uses a side channel attack and through a process called “ acoustic cryptanalysis ”, they successfully extracted 4096-bit RSA key From GnuPG. " We experimentally demonstrate that such attacks can be carried out, using either a plain mobile phone placed next to the computer, or a more sensitive microphone placed 4 meters away, ” The paper specifies some possible implementations of this attack. Some email-client softwares i.e. Enigmail can automatically decrypt incoming e-mail (for notification purposes) using GnuPG. An attacker can e-mail suitably-...
