esp if you can crack the encryption and look at what exactly it is sending back vs just the destination of the Ip packets though audio would need a certain bitrate. I think it’s creepy as hell and I would imagine most hackers would agree. The people here crying about the echo are cracking me up, because at least half have a smart phone (android or ios) that has the EXACT same technology. I’ve never before even heard of the whole ‘alexa’ thing and I consider myself as a hardcore hacker. I would be 100% ???????????????????????????????????? I think it needs to be made clearer exactly how these devices are using our data as the general public seem to be poorly informed on the matter. Or maybe they share a common GND line you can interrupt and switch. But at this point, it’s no different than having a mic available on my cell phone or laptop 24/7. Based on your previous coverage of similar topics, we thought you may be interested in this recently discovered voice activation device hack, and a new … The company claims that a lot of effort has been made to ensure the privacy of users, however there remains the possibility for a significant invasion for anyone within range of an Alexa device. Pretty scary, right? For a tech blog a lot of people here are comments and not understanding the underlying tech. Oh well. Portscan Alexa, both in Setup mode and regular mode. I heard about the new Amazon Echo and immediately submitted my request. 6. Use a good coms reciever and the sounds these monitors transmit is amazing. Nothing happens network wise (except service checks, update pings etc) until the wake word is spoken. Then he used Amazon’s built-in functionality to load his own version of the Echo’s so-called “bootloader”—the deep-seated software in some devices that tells them how to boot their own operating system—from his SD card, including tweaks that turned off the operating system’s authentication measures and allowed him the advantage to install software on it. Even if you have a dumb phone or a land line your calls and meta data are being recorded. etc…. To be absolutely clear form the beginning, I love my Echo and I am very excited about what Amazon will be doing with it in the future. This is a whole set of judgements that go along a precisely planned agenda. What’s the false positive rate on hearing “Alexa” vs. the false positive rate on having a physical button depressed? I have a friend with ADHD and he went nuts with it. You get the IP address 192.168.11.44 from her DHCP, and she’s at 192.168.11.1 . British security researcher Mark Barnes recently detailed a method anyone can follow to install malware on an Amazon Echo, along with a code that would silently stream audio from the hacked device to his own faraway server. First generation Echoes were made in 2015 and 2016, and have a model number ending in “01,” as shown below. Google uses 50-60 markers ranging from OS to browser ID users to deliver targeted ads. Personally I don’t trust anything that records your voice and sends it over the Internet for decoding, regardless of the company it comes from. Using an external SD card attached to the debug pads, they were able to boot into the actual firmware on the Echo, install a persistent implant, gain remote root shell access, and finally remotely snoop on the 'always listening' microphones. The processing power required is hardly onerous, though the training regimen for the recognition system is. I rarely have silence around me. “Alexa, **** off!” it seems results in “I’m sorry, I can’t find a device of that name on this network”. Aside from salting the population with surveillance equipment, and thereby holding a “spook”y bargaining chip, this massive data collection by the companies themselves are for the training of their respective AIs. You’re all comfortable with Siri if you own Apple devices, aren’t you? While this is happening NO data is sent to amazon, 0, zilch, do a packet sniff, nothing is happening. Barnes joined his own connections to two of the tiny metal pads, one wired to his laptop and another to an SD card reader. An open protocol means it might be possible for the Chinese to clone the device, and Amazon’s back-end service, both of which I’m sure they’ll want to make money on eventually. How is that possible? More on these later. Maybe we should buy one for some terrorists and see what happens, Has Al Quaeda got an Amazon account? I trust that Amazon are not going to jeopardise their considerable investment in voice services and their entire reputation on a crude attempt at pointless eavesdropping – especially when many of the net-savvy makers that they’re reaching out to with their free developer facilities would find it quite easy to catch them “exceeding their own terms and conditions”. Samsung got some flack a while back for having an always-listening smart TV, and they were upfront and honest about exactly what it was listening to and recording (hint: everything said near it). Seriously it’s almost 2017 and we have devices that require remote computing resources to do most of their work like a 1970s dumb terminal. It comes as a notification claiming…, You might come across a Subway Rewards Facebook ad. Many smart devices come with generic default passwords that are easy for hackers to guess. Wouldn’t you know it, more than a couple of those sidebar ads for wood floor cleaning products and companies appeared in my browser. array, PSU, case etc. She runs Linux on an ARM processor, an A8 I think. Of all the smart devices in my house it was my “encrypted/channel hopping” baby monitor that I later found out from my neighbor they were picking up on a different brand baby monitor in their own home. The offer is about a gift…, The Black Money Scam might look as if it is taken from a mafia movie,…. The old fashioned way. Here’s a Wireshark capture file from Alexa starting up. I’m not saying this is what is happening (I don’t own one of these) but it’s a hypothetical possibility. Let me know if you make any progress on it. Frequent clearing & scrpt blockers help but don’t completely stop it. I haven’t got one of these spy-boxes but it’s something I’d do if I had, one way or the other. Credit: Amazon. You don’t control who is being listened to on telephones, so even if your house is “clean” you may call another party that is being watched and guess what they are hearing every word you say…. I’m interested in these tools when they can be used on-demand, such as the Alexa button I’m building with Pi Zero. List. Actually I should patent that idea and make millions, except it’s probably been on the whiteboards for this project since the start. “We are all born ignorant, but to remain stupid requires hard work.”–Benjamin Franklin. But connecting it to IFTTT has added lots of functionality and I am looking forward to playing with the API to add more. Smart home speakers equipped with mics programmed to listen for everything you say may be turned into gadgets that could spy on everything you say. It’s neat to see what tools they have running on Alexa. + ad_rnd + '"><\/sc' + 'ript>'); Military Grade Protection For iPhone 12 - machined metal bumper provides protection without the bulk. But consider the most likely application for this, advertising. I can’t stand the idea of an always-on listener the same as those CCTV cameras everywhere in the UK and sprouting all over the US as well. var ad_rnd = Math.round(Math.random() * 10000000000000); Smart home speakers equipped with mics programmed to listen for everything you say may be turned into gadgets that could spy on everything you say. They just took advantage of the system in place. She responds on ports 8080 (HTTP) and 443 (SSL). But fine, lots of folks feel differently and are more than willing to allow these wiretaps into their houses. The worrying part is if someone hacks it or if the government forces access. The director of the FBI advocates covering the camera on your laptop because of how easily they can be compromised, do you think the microphones on devices are any more secure? An Alexa-supporting device is constantly listening to conversations within its range, and when it detects its activation word, in most cases “Alexa”, it lights up and records the question that follows before sending it to a cloud-hosted voice recognition engine which makes the decision on its response. Watched the traffic on my router. Or even within those, how have security protocols evolved to protect the applications and skills when applied to new channels, like Alexa, Google Assist, Cortana, Siri, etc. I can understand why companies use servers for recognition past a single simple trigger phrase. What about Dashbot? It seems like it would be easier to just not use the tech sure. One give away could be there would be a larger number of out going packets vs incoming when a request has not been made or the data size is larger than needed. More on that later. etc. Dogbert would have nothing on my evil genius armed with that stuff! I have noticed that it does this occasionally. Internally the shield is just an Allwinner A10 running Linux and some speech software, but they sell it as a no-bother module, so nice.