Researchers Turn Smartphone Vibration Motor Into Microphone To Spy On You (softpedia.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: Two researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have come up with a method to turn smartphone vibration motors into makeshift microphones, capable of recording the sound around them. The attack relies on using the vibration motor's coil to record incoming sound waves, which are then transmitted to the attacker, who then uses a processing algorithm to enhance the signal by reconstructing high-frequency waves. This is needed because the vibra-motor can only pick up low-frequency sounds, up to 2 kHz. Their method doesn't yield perfect results (4 in 5 people can understand the sounds) and also needs physical access to the device, but it puts in place the theoretical details needed to carry out and refine such attacks in the future.

Comments

Whoop de do.

[msauve]

It requires much more than simple "physical access." They hardwired the vibration motor to an analog input.

This is nonsense

[gweihir]

If you can physically manipulate the device, plant a proper microphone. If not, this is irrelevant, as there is no A/D input connected to that motor. The whole thing is an utterly worthless stunt by "researchers" greedy for attention but lacking in actual scientific skill. Why does this get reported here?

Re:What's worse?

[gweihir]

I would say that this gets reported is worse.