Reading (For Dummies)

Beating Keystroke Loggers

I came up with a fun way to beat keystroke sniffers while having to register for the Zodiac Tournament. I didn't trust the public lab computer that I was typing on after all the stories of people installing keystroke sniffers, but I think my method was rather ingenius.

Since I know a lot of digits of Pi, I started typing them, and clicked my mouse between emacs and my browser window when I hit digits in the sequence that happened to line up with my credit card number. I suppose repeatedly typing 01234567890123... would work as well. It may be susceptible to timing attacks, assuming that keystroke recorders become sophisticated enough to record keystroke timings. Still it is a lot safer to do this (or something like it) than to let some moron who put a key sniffer on the public computer you happen to be using have your credit card number.