Scientists from Stanford have created an application that allows you to eavesdrop using the gyro of an Android smartphone



    Information security issues occupy the minds of many professionals and users. With the development of technology, the possibilities of all kinds of spies / attackers are expanding, which sometimes use very original ways of obtaining protected information.

    Information security experts are trying to go one step further, and they themselves are inventing new ways to eavesdrop and peep in order to warn device developers and their users. "Forewarned is forearmed".

    Specialists from Stanford have developed an application, Gyrophone, which allows you to convert the device’s gyroscope (in this case, Android smartphones) as a microphone. As far as you can understand, the iPhone gyroscope is not suitable for reading sound, since this module only works with vibrations of a frequency below 100 Hz.

    It turns out that the gyroscopes installed in Android devices are able to perceive vibrations with a frequency of 80-250 Hz, which allows you to "record" a conversation on the phone without access to the device’s microphone. Of course, the recording quality will be very mediocre, since the available spectrum is very narrow, but a special algorithm allows you to get a recording with a more or less acceptable quality. An application created by specialists from Stanford gets access to the gyroscope without problems, since when installing the application permissions for this element are not requested (as opposed to access to the same microphone, for example).

    You can check your device using this link (web test, not an application, thanks AHTOLLlKA ).

    On August 22, developers will show their application at the Usenix Security conference, but for now you can get acquainted with the technical documentation of the project (.pdf, English).


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