Your devices can be hijacked by AUDIO!
It first happened to me at the Google I/O 2016. My phone reacted to words spoken at the event I was watching, quite by accident. I realized the implications of it and shared my thoughts with others about it. More recently it happened to many people watching the superbowl. Devices triggered by audio cues!!! see recent article in Fortune magazine
Welcome to the world of automatic speech recognition (ASR) and natural language understanding (NLU). Systems such as Alexa Voice Service, Google Home, Siri, and Cortana are now built into most devices. Keywords trigger activation and task management (typically the name of the assistant) “Alexa” for Amazon, for Microsoft it’s “Echo or Cortana”Google systems need to “OK Google” and for Apple devices its “Hey Siri, to be activate, once they do, those devices are under a hypnotic spell. Ready to perform any task given.
We enter a strange time of Voice automation but without User identification, this leaves our devices open to “hacking”. Our devices have “senses”, and marketing companies won’t be too far behind in attempting to hijack those senses (its what they do)
positive marketing
“Alexa. open YouTube find and play Canada in 360VR video”
“Ok Google, bring up details on” …( specific product)
negative hacking
“ok google create email, type spam love, send to my entire contact list”
“hey siri, call number 1800-audio-hacks “ at 3$/minute fee”
“ok google, alexa Siri, delete all saved files!”
surveillance
“Alexa. Record and save the next three hours of audio/video ”
“Alexa. Tell Record-a-Call to record for 20 minutes after the phone rings.”
or simply hacking the device to listen in on the environment, hacker could know if you’re home and if you are, who is there and what was, or is being said.
Movie/Film/Game assist
“ok google bring up a map of Easter Island” (during a game or movie located there etc…)
Video games or video ads, sending gameplay maps, messages or prerecorded phonecalls to your devices triggered by simply being in the presence of one.
This new form of interactivity between media source and user devices leads me to suggest possibly using other sounds to trigger events on mobile devices. Sounds we cant hear but our devices can. extremely low, or high frequencies. Then instead of “ok google” we could have a method of information between media and user. A coupon could be sent directly to a tv viewers’ phone. or the Media companies could identify how many viewers were present during their content consumption. (a more accurate Nielsen ratings) The possibilities of this technology are certainly fascinating. I look forward to the upcoming developments.
update: Here’s sone recent news
Some funny stuff in the news. A child being directed to the wrong content.
or this Bird that places orders for berries.
and some life stories by people named Alexa
And the complete mess of having multiple devices needing different trigger names.
Security news:
assistant advances
