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posted by on Monday January 09 2017, @11:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-the-NSA,-not-a-mosquito dept.

Ultrasounds emitted by ads or JavaScript code hidden on a page accessed through the Tor Browser can deanonymize Tor users by making nearby phones or computers send identity beacons back to advertisers, data which contains sensitive information that state-sponsored actors can easily obtain via a subpoena.

This attack model was brought to light towards the end of 2016 by a team of six researchers, who presented their findings at the Black Hat Europe 2016 security conference in November and the 33rd Chaos Communication Congress held last week.

Their research focuses on the science of ultrasound cross-device tracking (uXDT), a new technology that started being deployed in modern-day advertising platforms around 2014.

uXDT relies on advertisers hiding ultrasounds in their ads. When the ad plays on a TV or radio, or some ad code runs on a mobile or computer, it emits ultrasounds that get picked up by the microphone of nearby laptops, desktops, tablets or smartphones.

These second-stage devices, who silently listen in the background, will interpret these ultrasounds, which contain hidden instructions, telling them to ping back to the advertiser's server with details about that device.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 1) by Oakenshield on Monday January 09 2017, @12:30PM

    by Oakenshield (4900) on Monday January 09 2017, @12:30PM (#451414)

    Run you Tor in a VM and don't configure a sound device.

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 09 2017, @01:43PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 09 2017, @01:43PM (#451440) Journal

    Heh - I don't even turn on the sound device on my hardware. It's turned off in BIOS. The only sound I ever need is provided via USB, and that's unplugged most of the time. There is no camera attached to my computers, either. You say "paranoia", I say "better safe than sorry".

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2017, @04:56PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2017, @04:56PM (#451505)

    You should generally never browse without a VM anyway.