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Hacks are often caused by our own stupidity, but you can blame tech companies for a new vulnerability. Researchers from China's Zheijiang University found a way to attack Siri, Alexa and other voice assistants by feeding them commands in ultrasonic frequencies. Those are too high for humans to hear, but they're perfectly audible to the microphones on your devices. With the technique, researchers could get the AI assistants to open malicious websites and even your door if you had a smart lock connected.
The relatively simple technique is called DolphinAttack. Researchers first translated human voice commands into ultrasonic frequencies (over 20,000 hz). They then simply played them back from a regular smartphone equipped with an amplifier, ultrasonic transducer and battery -- less than $3 worth of parts.
What makes the attack scary is the fact that it works on just about anything: Siri, Google Assistant, Samsung S Voice and Alexa, on devices like smartphones, iPads, MacBooks, Amazon Echo and even an Audi Q3 -- 16 devices and seven system in total. What's worse, "the inaudible voice commands can be correctly interpreted by the SR (speech recognition) systems on all the tested hardware." Suffice to say, it works even if the attacker has no device access and the owner has taken the necessary security precautions.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/06/alexa-and-siri-are-vulnerable-to-silent-nefarious-commands/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 07 2017, @02:20PM (3 children)
There is something marketing-like about this article, I'm not quite sure for what. It is like that Geico commercial where claims are placed in strange places: "Did you know scientists say it snows on the moon now? In the future maybe people will being making snowmen on the moon and gieco is a great company." And it worked apparently, because I remembered which company it was.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 07 2017, @05:01PM (2 children)
I think it's because people seriously think there's a cute girl in their phone responding to their every command. Some voice assistants are empowered women as well with authorization to report sexual harassment. If I'm doing my psychology correctly, the little woman in the phone responding to somebody else's voice that you can't hear must be akin to a strange man whispering in one's wife's ear.
At least, that may be true if you're a heterosexual man. I'm not one of those so what the fuck do I know.
I just want a butler. I want a loyal manservant I can confidently and implicitly trust with even the most confidential matters. I don't know why anybody would want a woman for a servant. As far as sexual harassment, I don't know why anybody would view their faithful servant as a sexual object. The power dynamics are all fucked up. If I wanted a boyfriend, I'd go to bars more often and meet people. I want butler, just a butler.
Circle of protection: Freud. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, even if you're a person of indeterminate gender who prefers dating men.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday September 08 2017, @12:17AM (1 child)
It's just creepy.
"At least, that may be true if you're a heterosexual man. I'm not one of those so what the fuck do I know."
I'm thinking 'heterosexual men' is still too wide a category for what you're actually thinking of here, but go on.
"I just want a butler. I want a loyal manservant I can confidently and implicitly trust with even the most confidential matters."
That may be both too much and too little to ask for. Butlers are very complicated entities, but complications are the natural enemies of trust.
I had a friend who grew up with a house full of servants, when I first heard that my eyes went wide, that seemed so very cool. But it turned out she hated it. Because she never had any privacy. The servants were, in a sense, the masters - everyone living in the house, it seems, lived in fear of doing something that the servants would find amusing enough to repeat...
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 08 2017, @01:09PM
LOOK AT ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111