Presented at
Black Hat USA 2020 Virtual,
Aug. 6, 2020, 10 a.m.
(40 minutes)
<div dir="ltr">Recent studies have suggested various side-channel attacks for eavesdropping sound by analyzing the side effects of sound waves on nearby objects (e.g., a bag of chips and window) and devices (e.g., motion sensors). These methods pose a great threat to privacy, however they are limited in one of the following ways: they (1) cannot be applied in real time (e.g., Visual Microphone), (2) are not external, requiring the attacker to compromise a device with malware (e.g., Gyrophone), or (3) are not passive, requiring the attacker to direct a laser beam at an object (e.g., laser microphone). </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">In this talk, I introduce "Lamphone," a novel side-channel attack for eavesdropping sound; this attack is performed by using a remote electro-optical sensor to analyze a hanging light bulb’s frequency response to sound. I show how fluctuations in the air pressure on the surface of the hanging bulb (in response to sound), which cause the bulb to vibrate very slightly (a millidegree vibration), can be exploited by eavesdroppers to recover speech and singing, passively, externally, and in real time. I analyze a hanging bulb’s response to sound via an electro-optical sensor and learn how to isolate the audio signal from the optical signal. Based on our analysis, I develop an algorithm to recover sound from the optical measurements obtained from the vibrations of a light bulb and captured by the electro-optical sensor. I evaluate Lamphone’s performance in a realistic setup and show that Lamphone can be used by eavesdroppers to recover human speech (which can be accurately identified by the Google Cloud Speech API) and singing (which can be accurately identified by Shazam and SoundHound) from a bridge located 25 meters away from the target room containing the hanging light bulb. </div>
Presenters:
-
Ben Nassi
- PhD Student & Cyber Security Researcher, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Ben Nassi is a PhD student at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and a former Google employee. His research interests are security and privacy of drones, advanced driving assistance systems, smart irrigation systems, wearable technology, and other cool topics. His research was presented at top conferences (S&P, Ubicomp, DEF CON) and published in journals (TIFS), and was also covered by international media (Wired, ArsTechnica, Motherboard, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Business Insider). Ben has spoken at prestigious venues including 40th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, RSA Conference 2020, CyberTech TLV 2020, and IoT Village at DEF CON 26.
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