Keystroke timing is the pattern of intervals, pauses, and bursts created while a person types. Even when the text itself is hidden, these timing signals can reveal useful clues about activity. In security, that makes keystroke timing a form of metadata that may support user identification, behavior profiling, or side-channel analysis.
Attackers can study timing to infer when someone is typing, whether they are pasting versus entering text manually, or to correlate activity with other system events. In some environments, repeated file or application notifications can make typing rhythms easier to observe. Defenders reduce this risk by limiting high-resolution event exposure, batching or smoothing telemetry, and treating timing data as sensitive. The key lesson is that observable rhythm can leak information even when content remains protected.