Even Concrete Walls Can't Stop This Headphone Eavesdropping Attack
Security researchers in China have unveiled a side-channel attack technique capable of intercepting internal audio played through headphones and landline phones from tens of meters away using injected electromagnetic signals, even through solid walls.
Called InjectEave by a joint research team from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the finding could change how cybersecurity experts view physical EM vulnerabilities. Traditionally, passive EM attacks rely on eavesdropping on faint radiation emitted by microchips and analog components. However, low-frequency baseband signals, such as human speech audio operating between 10 Hz and 10 kHz, produce signals that naturally decay within a few inches, making EM interception impossible.
InjectEave bypasses the limitation by actively illuminating target hardware with a continuous-wave EM carrier signal transmitted via a directional radio-frequency antenna. When this carrier wave hits the internal circuitry of headphones, desk phones, or smart home appliances,...
Copyright of this story solely belongs to hothardware.com. To see the full text click HERE
