A new virus turns headphones into a microphone. Video
A group of Israeli researchers from Ben-Gurion University has developed a spyware program that allows you to use headphones to record sound, even when the microphone is muted or missing. He writes about it Furfur.
“People don’t think about this weak spot in the headphones,” explained Mordechai Gur, head of research at the University’s cybersecurity research center. “Even if you remove the microphone from your computer, but use headphones, you can still listen and record.”
It has long been known that headphones can convert air vibrations into electromagnetic signals, that is, work along the same principle as a microphone. Therefore, the microphone can be used instead of headphones, simply by connecting it to a different audio jack.
But experts from the research center went ahead and developed a program called SPEAKE (a) R. It is unnoticeable for the user to change the assignment of the audio connector to which the headphones are connected, that is, instead of the audio output, the connector begins to work on receiving data. To do this, the program uses a little-known jack retasking option, available in chipsets that are integrated into a large number of modern motherboards. Thus, spyware software after installation in the system can listen to the user through headphones using the basic tools of the Windows and Linux operating systems.
As shown by testing, headphones record sound worse than a microphone, but in general they provide good recording quality at frequencies of the human voice. Those who are paranoid and afraid of wiretapping and surveillance and have already removed the microphone from the computer, the researchers advised to pull the headphones out of the connector, in order to preserve confidentiality.
Previously, ForumDaily wrote that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg posted on a social network, a photo in which you can clearly see that the microphone and webcam of his MacBook Pro are taped.
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