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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.
It turns out that in addition to having vibration motors, smartphones also have regular microphones.
Who'da thunk?
It requires much more than simple "physical access." They hardwired the vibration motor to an analog input.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
...why not just install a microphone connected to the LINE IN instead of wiring the vibration motor to it as they have done?
Nice try Obama!!!
"especially because there are far easier ways to spy on most people" You mean like the purpose built microphone on every smartphone?
No one can "Spy On You" using this method on any stock production phone. The vibration motor is connected to an *output* of the chip that drives it, not an *input*. Additionally, that output is likely to be digital rather than analog, so even its direction could be magically reversed, the likelihood of the chip being able to process whatever signal the motor would produce in response to ambient sounds would be just about zero. And if someone was modifying your phone in order to hear your conversations, there are *much* easier, faster, more reliable, less convoluted ways of doing it - like piggybacking on the microphone that's already there.
The ability to use a vibration motor as a microphone is a technical curiosity, but it's not at all surprising to anyone familiar with basic electrical and electronic concepts. The researchers' work is a nice proof-of-concept which may find useful application at some point. But really, the title of TFA, (and TFS), is solidly in the province of yellow journalism. There are more than enough *real* reasons to fear for our privacy - there's absolutely no need to further stoke that fire with false fears like those being promoted here.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
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?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I would say that this gets reported is worse.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.