Skip to Content

App spies on your keyboard, steals your passwords

by Kelly Hodgkins Jul 15th 2011 at 1:00PM

iPad owners using their tablet in public may want to look closely at the people around them. A new app called shoulderPad lets Mac OS X, jailbroken iPad and jailbroken iPhone owners secretly steal your login and passwords. It uses the camera on these devices to track the keyboard input. Specifically, the app looks for the slight blue glow that occurs right after your touch a key. It records these glows, analyzes the pattern and spits out your passwords. All the thief has to do is sit near you and pretend to be using their phone, tablet or computer. This same technique can be applied to recorded footage so be watch out for those surveillance cameras, too.



View Tags

Related Stories

Categories

Mac iPhone iPad iOS OS X

iPad owners using their tablet in public may want to look closely at the people around them. A new app called shoulderPad lets Mac OS...
 

Add a Comment

Sign in »
*0 / 3000 Character Maximum Comment Moderation Enabled. Your comment will appear after it is cleared by an editor.

8 Comments

Filter by:
Dann

Years ago, and I mean years ago. Sketchy people in Grand Central station would stand near by pay phone booths during rush hour and record people punching in their calling card and credit card info. Obviously this was in the days before cell phones.
There's always someone to steal, cheat and lie. There's always someone who's going to take advantage of the situation for their own gain.

July 15 2011 at 6:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
LD

Or, you know, since you are RECORDING THEM TYPING, you could simply just watch what key they hit. Duh.

July 15 2011 at 2:45 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to LD's comment
brijazz

And then you'd need to manually transcribe every single keypress. If someone's typing an obscure string of letters, numbers and symbols (ie a good-quality password), that might be a bit of a trick. This app would automate the process. Duh.

July 15 2011 at 4:00 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
kf98

Looks like FUD to me. How is this really any different than recording someone typing on any input device, tablet or not.

July 15 2011 at 1:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to kf98's comment
brijazz

It's different, since it "looks for the slight blue glow that occurs right after your touch a key" on iOS. Wouldn't work on any other input device that doesn't provide the same visual feedback.

July 15 2011 at 4:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to brijazz's comment
kf98

Assuming I'm not legally blind, I can still look at the person's fingers to figure out which key they're pressing.

July 15 2011 at 4:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down
puhsitch

Yeah, but this makes it easier, and it's likely to attract the attention of some unsavory folks who may not have otherwise thought about spying on iPads.

July 15 2011 at 7:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to puhsitch's comment
VanillaSpice

"Yeah, but this makes it easier, and it's likely to attract the attention of tech blogs who are in need of some clickbait on a low news day".

*Fixed

July 18 2011 at 12:32 AM Report abuse rate up rate down
Buy an ad here

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.