8 familiar devices that can spy on you. And it's not a joke
Miscellaneous / / May 31, 2023
Mania of persecution can cause robotic vacuum cleaners, TVs and even smart light bulbs.
1. Robot vacuum cleaner
Robotic vacuum cleaners are undoubtedly great household helpers, only they are a potential threat to your privacy. The fact is that the manufacturer or attackers may well use them to collect information without the permission of the owner.
One example is the Roomba i7+ vacuum cleaner. It is able to create a map of your home while cleaning, which helps it move around efficiently. And according to conditions iRobot makes this data available to its partners – including Google.
Well, it's just that Good Corporation needs to have a map of your apartment - what's wrong with that.
At the same time, iRobot vacuum cleaners, driving around the house, calmly take pictures of their owners in a variety of poses, and then send these pictures to data scientists and AI trainers. For example, in the network hit photos of the mistress of one such robot, sitting on toilet bowl
. The company calmly replied that the green “Recording” LED was on on the vacuum cleaner, which means that everything is in order.2. Automobile
A car is a good means not only for transportation, but also for espionage. Modern smart models are crammed with various electronics, and if someone else gains access to it, the car will tell a lot of interesting things about its owner.
The easiest way to follow the driver is through the navigation system and GPS. Data about your trips and location is collected by the on-board computer and sent vehicle manufacturer or a third party to profile your behavior on the road.
This is necessary to train artificial intelligence to drive unmanned vehicles.
Another example. Self-driving vehicles — such as the Tesla Autopilot, GM Super Cruise, and Nissan ProPilot Assist — can drive independently on the highway, but require the driver to be ready to take control in any moment.
And to be sure that he did not fall asleep and does not scroll through social networks, but follows the road, manufacturers supply salon with cameras, lidars and infrared sensors that monitor human activity and position body.
In Europe, for example, all new car models with autopilot functionality must be equipped such systems to achieve the coveted five-star safety rating from the new car evaluation program.
3. Headphones and speakers
Most modern headphone models provide microphones to use them for conversations. And some devices with the function noise reduction There are also additional audio input sources. They catch vibrations in the environment so that the headphones can produce out-of-phase sound that drowns out external noise.
So, if malware or a hacker gains access to the device to which the headphones are connected, they can remotely listen to the owner through them. In addition, this trick can be used by providers of targeted advertising.
You let out in private that you had a backache, and all of a sudden, ads for massagers started popping up everywhere.
Even the simplest and cheapest earbuds without any built-in recording systems can be used by hackers or intelligence agencies for surveillance. The fact is that headphones and microphones perform similar functions: the former convert electrical signals into sound, the latter convert sound into electrical signals. And they can be easily reconfigured to work in the opposite direction.
Security researchers at Ben-Gurion University in Israel developed malware called Speake (a) r that makes the computer's output connectors work like inputs. As a result, your headphones and speakers are able to record all the sounds that reach them, even if your PC does not have any microphones at all.
4. TV
Smart TVs have also become adept at collecting information about the owner. Manufacturers receive data from the device, its operating system and applications, as well as from gadgets connected to him. For example, from set-top boxes like Chromecast, Apple TV and Fire Stick.
Then this information sold advertisers, statistics collectors and data brokers. They collect real-time information about the behavior, interests and demographics of the audience - this is necessary to create more personalized advertising.
Study, conducted scientists from Northeastern University in Boston and Imperial College London showed that data from TVs and smart devices sent by manufacturers to Google and Netflix advertising departments, even if the user has never launched the last service since the purchase devices.
In addition, these smart gadgets usually come with a built-in microphone and sometimes a camera for voice control or video calls. And these things can write too sounds from your room even when the TV is off.
5. Smart speakers
Smart speakers with voice assistants can answer our questions, control various devices and turn on music on command. And they constantly listen to their users in order to quickly respond to requests.
The collected audio recordings are sent to the servers of manufacturers like Google or Yandex to teach artificial intelligence. Naturally, this data will be used to profile users and show them targeted ads. In addition, information may transfer and third parties such as advertising agencies or data brokers.
For a while, by the way, Apple, Google, and Amazon had divisions of moderators who listened to data from Siri and Assistant. Now, however, companies claim to have abandoned this practice after the recording of conversations (and intimate contacts) of some users leaked in Internet.
6. router
It's pretty obvious that router is a key device in the home network responsible for transferring data between your gadgets and the Internet. And it can be used by the manufacturer to analyze the network traffic passing through it. In addition, hackers who gain access to the router will be able view information about websites you visit, transferred files and messages.
But an even more original way to use a router for spying is a technology called Wi‑Fi‑sonar. It allows you to create three-dimensional images based on the radio waves emitted by the router, that is, Wi‑Fi signals. Her developed experts from Carnegie Mellon University.
A properly configured router allows a hacker to literally see through walls.
Of course, you can’t see any small details on a 3D indoor map created by collecting Wi-Fi radiation reflected from people and objects. But it is quite possible to find out the number of human figures and what poses they are in.
Batman's locator worked in much the same way in the movie The Dark Knight. Who would have thought that invented for cinema technology will be feasible in practice.
7. Fitness tracker
Fitness trackers are designed to track the wearer's physical activity and health. So, if you hack such a gadget, it will tell the attacker a lot of interesting things.
For example, a bracelet equipped with a GPS module can define the user's location and monitor his movements. In addition, the hacker will receive data on the heart rate, sleep quality and physical activity of the tracker carrier. It will also determine whether the owner is walking, running or driving a car, train or bus.
But the most original way of espionage is to track the movement of hands using the accelerometers built into the tracker.
This technology developed experts at Binghamton University in New York. With its help, the experimenters were able to correctly determine the entered PIN code or graphic pattern for unlocking a smartphone in 64% of cases, card code when using an ATM in 87% of cases and computer passwords in 96% of cases.
True, for this you need the bracelet to be on the hand with which you enter combinations - while many right-handed people, for example, wear a watch on their left hand.
8. smart light bulb
It would seem that a smart light bulb is the most innocuous device that can be in your home. It is not equipped with any microphones or cameras, and usually does not store PIN codes from bank cards either. However, even such simple devices can be used hackers with due diligence.
For example, computer security researchers from the Check Point Research team managed hack into a home network using a Philips Hue smart light bulb and install malware on computers, smartphones and tablets of victims connected to the same WiFi networks, which is a light bulb.
The hacking scheme was as follows: a hacker uses a vulnerability in the wireless protocol that controls a smart light bulb and starts playing with color and brightness. The user notices that the device is behaving strangely, opens the app and tries to reset it.
Smart home central hub re-adds compromised light bulb and hacked fixture gets the ability to spam junk data on the home network and even install malware in hub
And even if the light bulb is unable to transmit this kind of information, the hacker still will be able, tracking her condition, find out which rooms the victim enters by how she turns on and adjusts the lighting. For example, if a person turns on the light in the bedroom, it means that he is not in the bathroom and hallway now.
So you can find out when the owner of smart bulbs is sleeping when he goes to the kitchen eat and at what time he usually leaves the house to go to work. Useful information for burglars.
Read also🧐
- 5 non-obvious ways to spy on you using your smartphone
- How to protect personal data on the Internet
- What is stalking and how to protect yourself from it