Remote Exploit of Vista Speech Control

An anonymous reader writes "George Ou writes in his blog that he found a remote exploit for the new and shiny Vista Speech Control. Specifically, websites playing soundfiles can trigger arbitrary commands. Ou reports that Microsoft confirmed the bug and suggested as workarounds that either 'A user can turn off their computer speakers and/or microphone'; or, 'If a user does run an audio file that attempts to execute commands on their system, they should close the Windows Media Player, turn off speech recognition, and restart their computer.' Well, who didn't see that coming?"

Comments

Most Important Part of the Announcement

[eldavojohn]

Microsoft cautioned everyone not to play the song "Hit Me Baby One More Time" by Britney Spears on or near your computer while the mic is on.

Several lawsuits already involve brutal crimes by computers against annoying young teeny bopper women. Although we can't act like we didn't see this coming, tension has been steadily rising.

Re:Most Important Part of the Announcement

[kannibal_klown]

Worse yet!!!

One of the computer geeks at the Pentagon better not be watching any Star Trek episodes.

Computer. Initiate self destruct sequence. Authorization 1A 2B 3C

Re:Most Important Part of the Announcement

[joshetc]

Microsoft cautioned everyone not to play the song "Hit Me Baby One More Time" by Britney Spears on or near your computer while the mic is on.

Several lawsuits already involve brutal crimes by computers against annoying young teeny bopper women. Although we can't act like we didn't see this coming, tension has been steadily rising [theonion.com]. You should see what happened to the guy who played the Nirvana song "Rape Me".

Re:Most Important Part of the Announcement

[Anonymous Coward]

Authorization 1A 2B 3C

Hey! That's the authorization code on my luggage!

Yell Commands Across the Room

[ehaggis]

Is that a remote exploit?

I tried to replicate the bug, but all I got was

[knightmad]

c:> Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all: Command not found

Re:I tried to replicate the bug, but all I got was

[teslar]

Lucky you. I was watching Star Trek First Contact in the living room and fifteen minutes after Picard told the Enterprise computer to initiate the self-destruct protocol, my laptop exploded!

Re:That's hardly an exploit

[just_another_sean]

So here's to you, Mr. Exploit Finding Man!

Now there's a Bud commercial I'd like to hear.

Shit...

[thousandinone]

I just watched 2001: A Space Odyssey on my machine... this may be my last post.

Nothing new here

[Ruprecht the Monkeyb]

Years ago when I worked in a shop that used OS/2 (one late version of which included speech recognition), we used to play pranks on each other all the time using that 'feature'. Things like changing a startup sound to be two minutes of silence followed by a verbal shutdown command, or changing confirmation prompt sounds to be 'cancel'. Good fun. The random 'select all / delete / yes' was the best, though.

Fraternity Fun

[Zerth]

If they don't prevent them from running arbitrary commands, you know 5 years in the future that every time term end comes around there will be some naked freshman running through the uni library/labs shouting "quit without saving! yes! reboot! yes! shutdown -h now!"

We've been waiting for this (and joking about it)

[Qbertino]

Me and my friends have been waiting for this and joking about it since IBM Via Voice and Dragon Speak. A whole new era of IT pranks and cyberterrorisim awaits us. Imagine bursting into a room full of PCs and yelling

"FORMAT DRIVE C! CONFIRM!".

Instant fun.
Makes me feel all soft and gooshy inside just thinking of it. :-)

Re:That's hardly an exploit

[VertigoAce]

The audio mixer in Vista is no longer based on different audio types (MIDI, CD Audio, WAV, etc). Instead, there is a volume slider and mute button for each application that makes sounds. So you can mute IE, AIM (those annoying video ads), and Windows itself, while still playing your music in WinAmp or WMP.

Bah...

[eno2001]

I expect someone to come up with a site that says:

"Start Internet Explorer"
"Go aytch tee tee pee colon slash slash gee oh ay tee ess ee dot see ex"

Brrr...

Startup Sound

[EricJ2190]

Now I see why Microsoft doesn't want you to change the Vista startup sound.

Prior art

[hweimer]

Time to quote a usenet classic:

Last year, out in California, at a PC users group, there was a demo of
smart speech recognition software.

Before the demonstrator could begin his demo, a voice called out from the
audience:

"Format c, return."
"Yes, return."

Damned short demo, it was.

Re:That's hardly an exploit

[Lanoitarus]

Bud Light Presents...
Real American Heroes (reaaalllll american heroooessss...)
Today we salute you, Mr Computer Software Exploit Finder (computer software exploit fii-inder)
While others are wasting away their lives drinking, dating, and and having fun, you're hunched over a screen, plowing through code.(hunch plow hunchie plow)
You may not have seen the sun in days, but thats ok- you do this for the greater good.(greaaater goooo-ooodd)
Only YOU could realize that a carefully crafted web favorites icon could potentially bring the world to its knees.(Down on its kneeee--eesss)
So crack open an Ice Cold Bud Light, Oh Overload of Overflow, because without you, CmdrTaco would have to get a real job.

Next Mac Ad is even better

[jgc7]

PC: Hi I'm a PC
Mac: and I'm a Mac
PC: I have a cool new feature called voice control.
Mac: That is stupid. I have the Time-Machine which let's you recover old documents. Let's say you accidently delete the documents folder
PC: Okay
Mac: To get you documents back, all you have to do is slide the time machine back one minute.
PC: Sounds cool, but cant you just get the documents out of the trash?
Mac: Yes, but it works even if you accidentally empty the recycle bin