Here's a neat party trick for you.<p>I had a MacGyver moment in the past where I made a phone call with only are pair of old earbuds and a phone cord (no switches, no dial pad).<p>A speaker is basically the same thing as a microphone in reverse. Normally it takes an electrical signal to move a physical element that creates the sound waves. But you can also move the element and it will generate an electrical signal.<p>To dial you can use the old rotary trick. The old phones dialed by pulses of quickly disconnecting and reconnecting. You can do that by hand if you want but it might require a little bit of practice and dexterity. Basically if you want to dial a 5, just disconnect the wire from the headphone to the phone cord and then reconnect it 5 times in a row.<p>You have to both listen and speak through the ear bud. Not the best quality or easiest to do but it works.
The bit you want to know:<p>> Their malware uses a little-known feature of RealTek audio codec chips to silently “retask” the computer’s output channel as an input channel
Interesting research, but with people already plugging those headphones into a portable surveillance set, and plus them using headsets (which are already microphones as well), this seems a bit chasing the wrong target?<p>(Assuming that the connected computer is compromised also already implies that the attacker has a microphone at their disposal, with most modern devices like smartphones, tablets and mobile computers)
paper: <a href="http://cyber.bgu.ac.il/advanced-cyber/system/files/SPEAKE%28a%29R.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://cyber.bgu.ac.il/advanced-cyber/system/files/SPEAKE%28...</a><p>video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez3o8aIZCDM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez3o8aIZCDM</a><p>"It’s no surprise that earbuds can function as microphones in a pinch [...] But the researchers took that hack a step further. Their malware [...] silently “retask” the computer’s output channel as an input channel, allowing the malware to record audio even when the headphones remain connected into an input-only jack and don’t even have a microphone channel on their plug."
One thing that's not clear from the article - are external headphones <i>required</i> for this to work? Can this not be done with the built-in speakers?
Incidentally, if Wired's ad-blocking "veil" gets in the way, right click, select "Inspect Element", find the "veil" item, right click, and select "Delete Node". No more veil.
This technique was just as valid 8 years ago as it is today. The only difference today is that the realtek chipsets with port reassignment are more prevalent.
The article as a whole is quite sensationalist.<p>Once people have access to your underlying device - what exactly do you think is going to happen?<p>"Oh but if you disconnected your microphone then think again". How many bloody people do that? A few dozen in the world?<p>What a piece of shit.<p>Now the technical underpinning that jacks can be reassigned isn't new for Realtek, lots of PC motherboards have given the option for years and years.<p>This is all not really news.
Serious question: I understand the argument against the classic "why should I care if someone records my conversations? I don't do anything illegal.", being that once the government starts recording everything you say the freedom of being able to say anything negative against them goes away knowing they could be listening. That said, why should I, a boring law abiding citizen, go around disabling my hardware and covering webcams etc...? If someone were to ask my what I was doing, just the fact that it's possible to hijack desktop mics is that enough for me to start putting faraday cages around myself? Serious question. Thanks :)
We changed the baity title to representative language from the article. If anyone suggests a better (more accurate and neutral) title, we can change it again.
Are there more details of the 'hack' somewhere? Does this mean that one could take advantage of an extra input channel, or possibly two? What would be sacrificed if anything, latency?