Computer scientists from Tel Aviv University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan have discovered a computer version of
synesthesia that
allows them to determine what’s being displayed on a monitor by listening to sounds emitted by the monitor.
As you might suspect, those sounds are very faint and not easily detected by human hearing. But they are there as tiny high-pitched tones produced by a monitor’s power supply in response to the varying demands of the screen display. But
special equipment isn’t required to exploit the vulnerability that’s produced by this characteristic of most monitors.
In their paper, which was released on Aug. 21, the scientists showed that
those sounds could be recorded using the microphone in a standard consumer webcam, by a smartphone or by a digital assistant such as an Amazon Echo or Google Home device.
Furthermore,
this exploit does not require the presence on site of the attacker. They can record the sounds over a remote call, such as one from Google Hangouts. The amount of information that the researchers were able to discern using their method was remarkable...
more
