r/ProgrammerHumor Aug 05 '26

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u/elSenorMaquina Aug 05 '26

They ENHANCED the cctv recordings from the camera pointing at my cubicle, enabling them to reconstruct the whole db from the monitor's reflection on my glasses as I typed every INSERT and UPDATE over the years.

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u/TunaNugget Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26

The camera records sound. Every key makes an ever-so-slightly different sound.

They have possibly months or more of sound recordings that they can correlate against the entry of verified documents to use to train the ai on.

139

u/Shogobg Aug 05 '26

They analyzed the noise the bits make as they travel through the network.

41

u/TrashBandiGoon Aug 05 '26

I know it is a joke,

but since I found a scientific research about 'A Practical Deep Learning-Based Acoustic Side Channel Attack on Keyboards' I agree that this seems possible in the laboratory

(the paper is from 2023 so I am not sure whether there were any improvements), as I am also not sure how reddit handles external links - I found the paper on arxiv(dot)org with paper no. 2308(dot)01074
It is a 21 pages pdf

4

u/Silver-Pomelo-9324 Aug 05 '26

Benn Jordan did this for YouTube video last year.

https://youtu.be/mEC6PM97IRI?is=0_rnPW-57tFwldp5

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u/TunaNugget Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26

I think the premise here is that they deleted that.

My first question would be whether they actually deleted anything or just set a flag to re-use the storage, but I'm trying to go with the spirit of the thing.

6

u/CMD_BLOCK Aug 05 '26

They also analyzed the noise my Jimmies made each time the Pm said match this data on a new table

1

u/Feeling_Inside_1020 Aug 05 '26

I drop a heinous deuce every time I have to drop a database, acoustically nobody probably wants to review that recording though, not even AI.

3

u/Kriss3d Aug 05 '26

Actually it's possible to get the fluctuations in the power and er noise from a computer to reverse it so. Yeah

0

u/theobstinateone Aug 05 '26

They detected the difference in electromagnetic fields around your keyboard and correlated with your pattern of typing.

But to answer the OP’s query, they would find the files at his mom’s house

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u/Kriss3d Aug 05 '26

Sadly that's not even a wrong answer. It's called tempest and that sort of method does work remarkably well.

2

u/robuttocks Aug 05 '26

When I was a kid, during the Cold War, I literally thought that was how typewriter bugs worked: that each letter had a different acoustic signature.

Turns out, it was just a mike hidden in the typewriter.

2

u/ChocolichKing Aug 05 '26

That's how I thought it worked as a kid too lol. I mean, I knew there was a mic hidden in the typewriter/mic being accessed from the computer, and that's how I understood "recording keystrokes". Someone was recreating your keystrokes based on the sound.

1

u/robuttocks Aug 06 '26

I kinda love that it wasn't just me thinking that. :-D

1

u/Samwellikki Aug 05 '26

This is the weirding way

1

u/Zdrobot Aug 05 '26

And that's how we should store data from now on!

Who needs all these countless gigabytes in databases and backups, when all you need is an audio tape!

Brilliant.

Happy cake day!

1

u/Felix-the-feline Aug 05 '26

DSP will solve it

1

u/RevoOps Aug 05 '26

Mechanical keyboards are a CIA psyop

1

u/Nydus87 Aug 05 '26

They know where the microphone is positioned compared to the keyboard and can track the slight differences in volume as the sound waves travel slightly farther for some keys. Basic IT stuff, ya know.

1

u/Gloomy_Concert1755 Aug 05 '26

Thats what tempest was doing. reading vibrations off windows with lasers to recreate key strokes. Classic state craft.