Kennewick, WA / Las Vegas, NV (Friday, July 17, 2009) -- There's no stopping the onward march of technology -- and the security threats that go along with it. You're already familiar with spam, viruses, spyware, worms, Trojans, phishing and pharming. So what's next? Believe it or not, power sockets can now be used to eavesdrop on what people type on a computer.

Keystroke-counting is not just paranoia anymore.

Just in time for Bastille Day -- the traditional day of insurrection and rebellion -- security researchers have discovered that poor shielding on some keyboard cables means useful data can be leaked about each character typed.

This is good news for people who are engaged in forensic examination of computers, but bad news when you consider that bad people will also have access to it, which means losing your data could happen more quickly and easily than before.

By analysing the information leaking onto power circuits, the researchers could see what a target was typing.

The attack has been demonstrated to work at a distance of up to 50 feet, but refinement may mean it could work over much longer distances.

"Our goal is to show that information leaks in the most unexpected ways and can be retrieved," wrote Andrea Barisani and Daniele Bianco, of security firm Inverse Path, in a paper describing their work.

"Data-gathering" takes on a new meaning.

The research focused on the cables used to connect PS/2 keyboards to desktop PCs.

Usually, said the pair, the six wires inside a PS/2 cable are typically "close to each other and poorly shielded". This means that information travelling along the data wire, when a key is pressed, leaks into the ground-wire in the same cable.

The earth wire, via the PC's power unit, ultimately connects to the plug in the power socket, and from there information leaks out onto the circuit supplying electricity to a room.

Even better, said the researchers, data travels along PS/2 cables one bit at a time and uses a clock speed far lower than any other PC component. Both these qualities make it easy to pick out voltage changes caused by key presses.

A digital oscilloscope was used to gather data about voltage changes on a power line and filters were used to remove those caused by anything other than the keyboard.

"The PS/2 signal square wave is preserved with good quality... and can be decoded back to the original keystroke information," wrote the pair in a paper describing their work.

They demonstrated it working over distances of 3-feet, 15, 30 and 50 feet from a target, far enough to suggest it could work in a hotel or office.

"The tests performed in the laboratory represent a worst-case scenario for this type of measurement, which along with acceptable results emphasizes the feasibility of the attack on normal conditions," they added.

When you're using the internet, maybe the internet is using YOU.

The pair said their research was "work in progress" and expect the equipment to get more sensitive as it is refined.

The attack is due to be demonstrated at the Black Hat conference that takes place in Las Vegas from July 25 to 30, 2009.

Operating from his home office in Kennewick, WA, Richard Eaton is a founding father of the revolution in computer snooping.

CBS News Correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports Eaton has invented a simple but scary spying program called WinWhatWhere Investigator that is forging new grounds in the evolving debate about Internet privacy.

Eaton demonstrates as his program captures every keystroke made on a computer -- every mouse click, every e-mail sent, every word typed or deleted, everything -- and then it secretly reports back to the person spying on you. It's a technology becoming increasingly popular in the workplace, at home and in criminal investigations.

Investigator is not online tracking, it's a keystroke-tracking program installed on your computer. Among other things, it's revolutionized the way employers can spy on employees. Goofing off playing solitaire? Investigator records the cards you played. Shop on the boss's computer? It knows everything. If an employee took 30 minute to shop at Amazon, the program would track it.

Your keystrokes can reveal…everything.

"Yeah, and probably what they bought," said Eaton. "And if they entered a credit card number, that will be there too."

Every morning thousands of employers like John Hammel now wake up to Investigator readouts of what their workers did yesterday. Hammel, who owns a small marina near Unionville, IN, has warned his employees he's watching. He doesn't care about their personal business he says. However …"If you want to go to Jim Bob, Billy Ray's porn site and buy something for your wife, you don't need to be doing that at work. Not on my time and not on my computer," says Hammel.

Who else uses Investigator? Parents spying on their children's e-mails, like Robert Coleridge, of Bellevue, WA. Coleridge installed a keystroke program on the family computer and warned his 12-year-old daughter Amy that he would be watching her computer use.

"Eavesdropping to me is an invasion of privacy, protection is not," said Colderidge. He added that he thought the program would help protect his children from "predators."

Amy said she understands her father's point of view, but is not pleased.

"It scares me," she said. "I don't think he shouldn't, I just wish he wouldn't."

"This is powerful because it takes surveillance to the next level, said privacy advocate Evan Hendricks in Bethesda, MD. Hendricks acknowledges parents and employers have every right to monitor their own computers, but in the wrong hands, he predicts abuse.

"Like going after employees they don't like, going after a woman that refused them a date," he said. "This is a tool that can be used for things not as it was intended."