Hackers Could Use A Pop Song To “Watch” You Through Your Smart Speaker

                 Your phone, TV, or connected device could become a sonar spy, as white hat hackers at the University of Washington give new meaning to bad music. Forget your classic listening device: Researchers at the University of Washington have demonstrated that phones, smart TVs, Amazon Echo-like assistants, and other devices equipped with speakers and microphones could be used by hackers as clandestine sonar “bugs” capable of tracking your location in a room.

Their system, called CovertBand, emits high-pitched sonar signals hidden within popular songs—their examples include songs by Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake, and 2Pac—then records them with the machine’s microphone to detect people’s activities. Jumping, walking, and “supine pelvic tilts” all produce distinguishable patterns, they say in a paper. (Of course, someone who hacked the microphone on a smart TV or computer could likely listen to its users, as well.)

Lately we’ve been hearing a lot about these sound-based hacks. Researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of South Carolina demonstrated in March they could induce false readings in a phone’s accelerometer by playing certain sounds, potentially disrupting apps that relied on the tool, according to a report in The New York Times.

Another study, from last month’s Black Hat conference, showed devices with balancing gyroscopes like drones and hoverboards could be similarly disrupted, Ars Technica reports. And last year, researchers at Israel’s Ben Gurion University demonstrated how malware could turn headphones attached to a computer into a microphone able to pick up sounds from 20 feet away.

Sound can be also be weaponized in more directly harmful ways. “We Are the Champions” and “Babylon” were among the songsblasted at high volume during some Iraq War interrogations. Despite the New York Police Department’s arguments otherwise, a judge ruled in June that a lawsuit related to officers’ use of a long range acoustic device at a Black Lives Matter protest can proceed, because sound can cause physical harm. And earlier this month, the Associated Press reported that five U.S. diplomats in Cuba had suffered severe hearing loss—the result, a State Dept. investigation said, of a covert sonic weapon.

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