Are you being watched by your home speakers.
Feeling paranoid? You can forget about hidden cameras for a moment! A software application called “CovertBand” has been devised at the University of Washington that can spy on your physical movements. Using high frequency audio signals embedded within the music you are listening to on smart-television sets and portable audio devices and can track multiple users’ movements through ordinary barriers like walls, doors and windows. CovertBand conceals the attack by hiding its high frequency sonar pulses within the beats of popular songs, making it indistinguishable from the original background musical audio signal.
” using high-frequency sonar hidden in the beat of a song accurately tracks people’s private activities through your home speakers.
With the present-day tsunami of smart devices including Amazon’s Echo, Smart TVs, Smart Home, cellphones and tablets, advertisers, marketers and politicians are gathering more and more information about users. You may not be aware of how much information you are sharing with people you don’t know. In May of 2018 a woman in Portland Oregon reported that her Amazon Echo device recorded a private conversation she was having and forwarded the audio recording to an employee of her husband in Seattle Washington, and that it never requested her permission to do so.
With the present-day tsunami of smart devices including Amazon’s Echo, Smart TVs, Smart Home, cellphones and tablets, advertisers, marketers and politicians are gathering more and more information about users. You may not be aware of how much information you are sharing with people you don’t know. In May of 2018 a woman in Portland Oregon reported that her Amazon Echo device recorded a private conversation she was having and forwarded the audio recording to an employee of her husband in Seattle Washington, and that it never requested her permission to do so.
Researchers at the University of California Berkeley have told the New York Times that they were able to camouflage commands in recordings of music or spoken text that were inaudible to humans but were capable of being understood by personal digital assistants such as Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. Amazon has actually filed for a patent allowing for the device to “eavesdrop” on conversation in order to make pro-active commercial recommendations.
Microsoft owns Patent No. 20180336233, which states in its Abstract section: “A conversation assistance resource system is provided to connect a user to a resource based on a predicted user need. The conversation assistance resource system monitors user signals relative to a user profile associated with the user. The user profile is based on previously received user signals and includes user preferences, interests, etc. A user need is predicted based on a received user signal. A resource is identified based on the predicted user need and the user profile relative to the resource profile. A communication channel is established between the user and the resource responsive to confirmation by the parties such that the user may query the resource to resolve the predicted user need.” What this means is that “they” are going to listen to your conversations and push ad content at you based on what they perceive as your needs or wants.
Unless you live in cave in the woods with no electricity, almost everything you say and do can now be recorded surreptitiously. CovertBand has been tested for accuracy with a mean tracking error of 18 centimeters for a variety of movements including pumping arms, jumping, and supine pelvic tilting recorded through simple barriers such as walls and windows and that the listeners failed to detect the monitoring signals. You can delete Amazon’s recording one-by one using the App, or in total by logging into your account by visiting Amazon’s Content and Devices page, but if someone is watching your movements and you don’t know it – there’s no way you can delete the information, or even know what they might do with that knowledge.
If you want to check out some music samples that have been embedded with high-frequency sonar tracking visit the page at: http://musicattacks.cs.washington.edu/ – and if you want stop them from tracking you – switch off all your devices, sound-proof your room and you could try setting up a jamming signal at the same 18 to 20 kHz frequency range to prevent hacked devices or attackers in the next room from gathering your movement data. Good luck!
Conrad W. – https://twitter.com/BeesDeluxe
