video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez3o8aIZCDM
"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."
But even this is not quite right: it's by definition not an input-only jack, but rather a jack capable of both input and output (which the user may think is output-only), but that RealTek has quietly switched to input mode as a result of their malware.
Really this title is alarmist. Only very specific hardware, and you'd have to not notice the sound stopped.
This is an interesting idea and something that the driver software should be more vigilant about, but it's definitely not something that would lead me to conclude the headline.
The article itself claims two orders of magnitude better reach:
> In their tests, the researchers tried the audio hack with a pair of Sennheiser headphones. They found that they could record from as far as 20 feet away—and even compress the resulting recording and send it over the internet, as a hacker would—and still distinguish the words spoken by a male voice.
And that's where this falls apart.
While some people buy quality headphones, many will be using cheap, or rebranded low-quality headphones, like beats, or even no-name headphones.
As an example, lets say that a particular organization has taken a number of standard precautions to prevent audio from being recorded surreptitiously. They've banned cell phones and chosen computers without internal mics. The ability to record sound via the output jack would be huge.
Besides, I bet beats would work just fine. The reason Sennheiser's worked so well is probably because they have a large speaker, whereas a ear bud has a pretty small speaker. A speaker being used to pick up audio is basically a dynamic mic, which are not very sensitive for a given size. So I'd expect something like Beats, or the cheapo AKGs I have connected to my audio jack right now to work quite well.
The reason I’m singling out beats, and a few other cheap headphones is because those tend to add a DSP to boost the bass.
That’s why it wouldn’t work with them.
They have no base and sound very muffled. Sure, for 50 $ they are cheapish, but I expected better.
I had 2 pairs of philips before that were even cheaper, but sounded pretty good.
They have a lot of focus on bass (with having far overpowered bass compared to what high-quality headphones would have), and not much on detail.
Sennheiser produces products for many different categories, if you want accurate sound reproduction, better not buy those marketed for DJs.
These https://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD-518-Headphones-Black/dp... or https://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD-4-30i-White-Headphones/... would have been better for that use case.
Dedicated audio interfaces and more expensive cards are normally unable to do this, hardware wise.
SPEAKE(a)R: Turn Speakers to Microphones for Fun and Profit
Do you have a link to the paper?
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...
(I'm getting `access denied' on the original now too, but the Google cache link works.)
http://cyber.bgu.ac.il/advanced-cyber/system/files/SPEAKEaR....