Android By Russell Holly Aug. 15, 2014 1:27 pm
There’s a fine line being walked right now when it comes to technology that is always listening. On the one hand, it is incredibly cool to be able to just speak a command and have your device respond. This stops being cool real quick, however, once it dawns on you that someone who isn’t supposed to could be listening in on whatever you are doing.
A recent teaser for a talk being held by security researchers from Stanford University and defense firm Rafael, reveals an interesting way in which many Android phones could already possess always-listening capabilities by exploiting the gyroscope.
Most smartphones have gyroscopes. They are typically viewed as mostly harmless, and used for things like games or determining when you have flipped your phone over to silence a call. As it turns out, the gyroscopes used in most Android phones are capable of detecting vibrations within a range that includes the human voice. This means that if someone were to write an app to use the gyroscope as a microphone, there’s a good chance that app could pick up your voice.
Since the gyroscope is viewed by the Android OS as a simple tool that doesn’t need security permissions, it is also possible that someone could design a “gyrophone” app to be installed without your knowledge and the phone would do very little to stop the app from recording you.
Setting aside the difficulties associated with side-loading an Android app onto an unsuspecting user’s phone, we still don’t know how well this gyrophone concept actually works. The group responsible for the teaser video will be delivering a presentation at the Usenix Security conference next week, and Google is prepared to pay close attention and take action if necessary.
This is a perfect example of something that walks the fine line between cool and scary. On the one hand, knowing that someone could target you and record you without even using the microphone is a little unnerving. On the other hand, if the results of the presentation prove that the gyroscope can reliably detect voice patterns, these security researchers may have just discovered a low power method of voice initialization.
More...
A recent teaser for a talk being held by security researchers from Stanford University and defense firm Rafael, reveals an interesting way in which many Android phones could already possess always-listening capabilities by exploiting the gyroscope.
Most smartphones have gyroscopes. They are typically viewed as mostly harmless, and used for things like games or determining when you have flipped your phone over to silence a call. As it turns out, the gyroscopes used in most Android phones are capable of detecting vibrations within a range that includes the human voice. This means that if someone were to write an app to use the gyroscope as a microphone, there’s a good chance that app could pick up your voice.
Since the gyroscope is viewed by the Android OS as a simple tool that doesn’t need security permissions, it is also possible that someone could design a “gyrophone” app to be installed without your knowledge and the phone would do very little to stop the app from recording you.
Setting aside the difficulties associated with side-loading an Android app onto an unsuspecting user’s phone, we still don’t know how well this gyrophone concept actually works. The group responsible for the teaser video will be delivering a presentation at the Usenix Security conference next week, and Google is prepared to pay close attention and take action if necessary.
This is a perfect example of something that walks the fine line between cool and scary. On the one hand, knowing that someone could target you and record you without even using the microphone is a little unnerving. On the other hand, if the results of the presentation prove that the gyroscope can reliably detect voice patterns, these security researchers may have just discovered a low power method of voice initialization.
More...
