SUAD: Solid-Channel Ultrasound Injection Attack and Defense to Voice Assistants

As a versatile AI application, voice assistants VAs have become increasingly popular, but are vulnerable to security threats. Attackers have proposed various inaudible attacks, but are limited by cost, distance, or LoS. Therefore, we propose \nameAttack, a long-range, cross-barrier, and...

Is your phone listening to you? (Lock and Code S06E07)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast … It has probably happened to you before. You and a friend are talking —not texting, not DMing, not FaceTiming—but talking , physically face-to-face, about, say, an upcoming vacation, a new music festival, or a job offer you just got. And then, that same wee...

The Need for Trustworthy AI

If you ask Alexa, Amazons voice assistant AI system, whether Amazon is a monopoly, it responds by saying it doesnt know. It doesnt take much to make it lambaste the other tech giants, but its silent about its own corporate parents misdeeds. When Alexa responds in this way, its obvious that it is...

Eavesdropping on Phone Taps from Voice Assistants

The microphones on voice assistants are very sensitive, and can snoop on all sorts of data: In Hey Alexa what did I just type? we show that when sitting up to half a meter away, a voice assistant can still hear the taps you make on your phone, even in presence of noise. Modern voice assistants ha...

Manipulating Systems Using Remote Lasers

Many systems are vulnerable: Researchers at the time said that they were able to launch inaudible commands by shining lasers -- from as far as 360 feet -- at the microphones on various popular voice assistants, including Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Facebook Portal, and Google Assistant. … They...

Google Fixes Mysterious Audio Recording Blip in Smart Speakers

After Google Home users started receiving mysterious alerts when their fire alarms went off or their plates smashed in their homes, Google acknowledged that it accidentally rolled out a feature causing the smart devices to record sounds without the voice prompt. Reports of the privacy faux pas...

Hacking Voice Assistants with Ultrasonic Waves

I previously wrote about hacking voice assistants with lasers. Turns you can do much the same thing with ultrasonic waves: Voice assistants -- the demo targeted Siri, Google Assistant, and Bixby -- are designed to respond when they detect the owner's voice after noticing a trigger phrase such as...

Hackers Can Use Ultrasonic Waves to Secretly Control Voice Assistant Devices

Researchers have discovered a new means to target voice-controlled devices by propagating ultrasonic waves through solid materials in order to interact with and compromise them using inaudible voice commands without the victims' knowledge. Called "SurfingAttack," the attack leverages the unique...

Hackers Can Use Ultrasonic Waves to Secretly Control Voice Assistant Devices

Researchers have discovered a new means to target voice-controlled devices by propagating ultrasonic waves through solid materials in order to interact with and compromise them using inaudible voice commands without the victims' knowledge. Called "SurfingAttack," the attack leverages the unique...

Fooling Voice Assistants with Lasers

Interesting: Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are vulnerable to attacks that use lasers to inject inaudible­ -- and sometimes invisible­ -- commands into the devices and surreptitiously cause them to unlock doors, visit websites, and locate, unlock, and start vehicles, researchers report in a...

Hackers Can Silently Control Your Google Home, Alexa, Siri With Laser Light

A team of cybersecurity researchers has discovered a clever technique to remotely inject inaudible and invisible commands into voice-controlled devices — all just by shining a laser at the targeted device instead of using spoken words. Dubbed 'Light Commands ,' the hack relies on a vulnerability ...

Alexa, Siri, Google Smart Speakers Hacked Via Laser Beam

Researchers have discovered a new way to hack Alexa and Siri smart speakers merely by using a laser light beam. No physical access of the victims’ device, or owner interaction, is needed to launch the hack, which allows attackers to send voice assistants inaudible commands such as unlocking doors...

Apple Suspends Siri Program After Privacy Backlash

Apple is suspending a program that lets contractors listen in on Siri voice recordings after facing a rain of backlash regarding the privacy implications of the program. The suspension comes after a report in The Guardian last week outlining how contractors regularly listen to intimate voice...

Amazon Alexa, Google Home Are On a Collision Course With Regulation

Voice assistants are growing rapidly in popularity — but at the same time, the privacy concerns and security issues with popular home assistant devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home are peaking too. Earlier in July, Amazon came under fire after acknowledging that it retains the voice recording...

Google Home Captures Porn and More, Unbeknownst to Users

Google Home smart speakers and the Google Assistant virtual assistant have been caught eavesdropping without permission — capturing and recording highly personal audio of domestic violence, confidential business calls — and even some users asking their smart speakers to play porn on their connect...

Sending Inaudible Commands to Voice Assistants

Researchers have demonstrated the ability to send inaudible commands to voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant. Over the last two years, researchers in China and the United States have begun demonstrating that they can send hidden commands that are undetectable to the human ear t...

Hacking Voice Assistant Systems with Inaudible Voice Commands

Turns out that all the major voice assistants -- Siri, Google Now, Samsung S Voice, Huawei HiVoice, Cortana and Alexa -- listen at audio frequencies the human ear can't hear. Hackers can hijack those systems with inaudible commands that their owners can't hear. News articles...

Hackers Can Silently Control Siri, Alexa & Other Voice Assistants Using Ultrasound

What if your smartphone starts making calls, sending text messages, and browsing malicious websites on the Internet itself without even asking you? This is no imaginations, as hackers can make this possible using your smartphone's personal assistant like Siri or Google Now. A team of security...