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Your Phone Can Be Snooped On Using Its Gyroscope

Posted by Unknown on from the phone-can-be-snooped-on-by-everything dept.

stephendavion (2872091) writes Researchers will demonstrate the process used to spy on smartphones using gyroscopes at Usenix Security event on August 22, 2014. Researchers from Stanford and a defense research group at Rafael will demonstrate a way to spy on smartphones using gyroscopes at Usenix Security event on August 22, 2014. According to the "Gyrophone: Recognizing Speech From Gyroscope Signals" study, the gyroscopes integrated into smartphones were sensitive enough to enable some sound waves to be picked up, transforming them into crude microphones.

15 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. I give up... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Funny

    Can we just succumb to the inevitable and work on building a list of the parts of a smartphone that can't be used to spy on you?

    I'm thinking 'maybe the battery door'. Any other suggestions?

    1. Re:I give up... by plover · · Score: 3, Funny

      Apple fixed that problem. The iPhone has no battery door, so it can't be removed in case you don't want the phone to spy on you.

      --
      John
    2. Re:I give up... by nxtr · · Score: 3, Funny

      The vibrations of your voice cause voltage fluctuations in the battery, and can be reconstruct the image of the suspect from the reflection in the eye of the person across the street.

    3. Re:I give up... by geekmux · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Can we just succumb to the inevitable and work on building a list of the parts of a smartphone that can't be used to spy on you? I'm thinking 'maybe the battery door'. Any other suggestions?

      What's the point of securing any smartphone when all of your activity on the device is captured elsewhere and sold for profit? They don't just count how many times you play your songs. They count how many times you text during the day. They count how many times you click on icons. They count how many seconds you hover over app icons even when you don't buy them in order to market apps catered to your "maybe" whims. Yes, they do this shit. No, it's not called crazy, it's called statistical analysis to the nth degree in order to maximize profits.

      The phone is merely the vehicle. What that vehicle can do all depends on the driver. Unfortunately, we've all been thrown in the back of a telco cab and the driver was told to get lost years ago.

  2. Re:So? by plover · · Score: 2

    I'm going to assume most phones already have actual microphones, so how does this add any additional kind of insecurity? I'm going to assume most phones already have actual microphones, so how does this add any additional kind of insecurity?

    Apparently the sound from your mic and the echo from your gyroscopes were both parsed by your speech-to-text converter. I guess it works better than we thought!

    --
    John
  3. Hiding the phone... by khr · · Score: 3, Funny

    the gyroscopes integrated into smartphones were sensitive enough to enable some sound waves to be picked up, transforming them into crude microphones

    Yeah, that's why I always stick my phone inside an empty potato chip bag when I'm talking to someone...

  4. Re:So? by JazzXP · · Score: 3, Informative

    Basically an app can ask for permissions for the gyro only (if it even needs to) and be recording conversation.

  5. The paper says... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    They are currently able to recognize the spoken digits 1-9 correctly approximately 80% of the time. This is given a training data set from the same speaker and the same phone. Incredibly impressive, especially since it was done from a web browser and requires no special permissions or even knowledge from the user. For those of you that didn't read it. However, James Bond spy tool this is not yet...

  6. But snooped on with what? by sacrilicious · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Researchers will demonstrate the process used to spy on smartphones using gyroscopes at Usenix Security event on August 22, 2014. Researchers from Stanford and a defense research group at Rafael will demonstrate a way to spy on smartphones using gyroscopes at Usenix Security event on August 22, 2014. According to the "Gyrophone: Recognizing Speech From Gyroscope Signals" study, the gyroscopes integrated into smartphones were sensitive enough to enable some sound waves to be picked up, transforming them into crude microphones.

    I can't help but feel like there are gyroscopes involved in this process somehow...

    --
    - First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
  7. App permissions by grimJester · · Score: 2

    Apps request permissions for different pieces of hardware on a case-by-case basis. The average user might raise some eyebrows if an app that shouldn't need it wants to access your microphone, but access to gyroscope data might not even require user acceptance.

  8. Re:So? by rasmusbr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Basically an app can ask for permissions for the gyro only (if it even needs to) and be recording conversation.

    Yeah, that's the thing. You don't need permissions for the gyro on Android and iOS, so any and all of the apps that you have on your phone or tablet could be using the gyro and you wouldn't know, except for an anomalous battery drain.

  9. Re:So? by frinkster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Basically an app can ask for permissions for the gyro only (if it even needs to) and be recording conversation.

    Yeah, that's the thing. You don't need permissions for the gyro on Android and iOS, so any and all of the apps that you have on your phone or tablet could be using the gyro and you wouldn't know, except for an anomalous battery drain.

    Sure, but on iOS an app is suspended when you are on a phone call unless the app has used the system APIs to enable background execution. There are only a small number of background execution modes and your app must declare which it plans to use. When it comes to location-based background execution (the most likely use of the gyro), your app still gets suspended. The system wakes it up periodically and sends location updates to a function in your app and then gives the app a small time window for that function to return an expected value. It is very much a discrete task-based multitasking system - completely different than normal desktop machines. Good sometimes. Bad sometimes.

  10. Re:So? by rasmusbr · · Score: 2

    Permissions on Android are a bit more rudimentary, so it would be simple to make a background process that just sits and quietly listens to the gyro. You would need to ask for the permission to keep the device awake in order to keep the CPU and sensor chip alive and (in order for it to be practical) the permission to start on boot.

  11. Phone permissions suck by Gothmolly · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Every app seems to want access to your full memory, location info, camera, microphone and contact list. Why does a flashlight app need all this?

    I carry a phone because I have to for work, and I need something to read while on the crapper, and that's it. People who use all these fancy apps are the product, not the customer.

    --
    I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
  12. Re: A profitable business idea ... by lemonfresh33 · · Score: 2

    Just don't use that device anywhere public. Or on a public network because they can snoop on you that way.