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Experts uncover Google Home flaw that could have affected user privacy:
Some Google Home smart speakers could have been hijacked to control the device remotely, and even listen in on people's private conversations, a security expert has claimed.
The bug was discovered by cybersecurity researcher Matt Kunze, who received $107,500 in bounty rewards for responsibly reporting it to Google.
[...] First, the attacker needs to be within wireless proximity of the device, and listen to MAC addresses with prefixes associated with Google.
After that, they can send deauth packets, to disconnect the device from the network and trigger the setup mode. In the setup mode, they request device info, and use that information to link their account to the device and - voila! - they can now spy on the device owners over the internet, and can move away from the WiFi.
But the risk is bigger than "just" listening to people's conversations. Many smart home speaker users connect their devices with various other smart devices, such as door locks and smart switches. Furthermore, the researcher found a way to abuse the "call phone number" command, and have the device call the attacker at a specified time and feed live audio.
Related: The Suspicion Becomes Real: Hackers Can Take Control of Alexa and Listen to You
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Subsentient on Wednesday January 04, @08:46AM (2 children)
Smart speakers are largely made to spy on you, it's just usually that data goes back to Google or Amazon.
I'm not surprised there's ways to get around that and send that data elsewhere.
I will never allow one of those things in my house.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 4, Insightful) by crafoo on Wednesday January 04, @04:40PM (1 child)
A huge reason to get these devices into peoples' houses - to listen to as many conversations as possible, from as many people as possible. As many speaking mannerisms as possible, as many subcultures as possible. Full conversation coverage.
The gold rush for big data is real. I'd love to see the training sets for NN's they've built using all of the voice data they've collected. I just assume it's beyond voice as well, and they are building huge relational datasets of what people talk about, when, with who. absolutely priceless data.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Ox0000 on Wednesday January 04, @05:06PM
Someone else said it here a couple of years ago: