SCaN: Acoustic Keyboard Eavesdropping

The New York Times Magazine reports that an American scientist with a Russian name has developed a method to acoustically analyze an audio recording of typing, and determine what was typed.

From the abstract: We show that PC keyboards, notebook keyboards, telephone and ATM pads are vulnerable to attacks based on differentiating the sound emanated by different keys. Our attack employs a neural network to recognize the key being pressed.

They use a learning computer to hear what you're typing? This is one step away from HAL in 2001 reading those guys' lips! What about when it "learns" your voice mail password, ATM PIN, eBay login, etc?

It's $19 to buy the full research paper.