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The devices have a mute switch Why would I trust that this does anything at all?

by einr 7y ago

fwip 7y ago
Because you can check. Open it up, see what it does. Use Wireshark to inspect traffic. More importantly, anyone can check, and many people have. Imagine the scoop that "the mute switch does nothing" would be for a tech journalist.
- einr 7y ago
  Here is a Google Home teardown: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Google+Home+Teardown/72684 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Google+Home+Teardown/72684 You will note that the mute button is not a physical switch that cuts the signal from the microphone, but a soft button. It will probably do what it claims most of the time, but if Google for whatever reason wanted to secretly unmute it remotely, I have no doubt they could. Wireshark? Sure, but what am I even looking for? They could be holding on to recordings in storage to send them later when the device is unmuted again. They could be embedding audio in encrypted form into other innocuous-looking packets -- I doubt a device like this is quiet on the network even when muted. Until all the software is open source and auditable and the switch verifiably breaks the physical signal path to the mic, a device like this can never be trusted.
  - behringer 7y ago
    > if Google for whatever reason wanted to secretly unmute it remotely, I have no doubt they could. Many things can happen in a hypothetical future, what does that have to do with today's reality?
- 50656E6973 7y ago
  >Because you can check. Open it up, see what it does. Use Wireshark to inspect traffic. 99.9% of users are incapable of doing this. >Imagine the scoop that "the mute switch does nothing" would be for a tech journalist. Google has already been caught doing this type of thing with location data: https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/13/google-keeps-a-history-of-your-locations-even-when-location-history-is-off/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/13/google-keeps-a-history-of-...

The devices have a mute switch Why would I trust that this does anything at all?

by einr 7y ago

The devices have a mute switch Why would I trust that this does anything at all?

fwip 7y ago

Because you can check. Open it up, see what it does. Use Wireshark to inspect traffic. More importantly, anyone can check, and many people have. Imagine the scoop that "the mute switch does nothing" would be for a tech journalist.

einr 7y ago
Here is a Google Home teardown: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Google+Home+Teardown/72684 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Google+Home+Teardown/72684 You will note that the mute button is not a physical switch that cuts the signal from the microphone, but a soft button. It will probably do what it claims most of the time, but if Google for whatever reason wanted to secretly unmute it remotely, I have no doubt they could. Wireshark? Sure, but what am I even looking for? They could be holding on to recordings in storage to send them later when the device is unmuted again. They could be embedding audio in encrypted form into other innocuous-looking packets -- I doubt a device like this is quiet on the network even when muted. Until all the software is open source and auditable and the switch verifiably breaks the physical signal path to the mic, a device like this can never be trusted.
- behringer 7y ago
  > if Google for whatever reason wanted to secretly unmute it remotely, I have no doubt they could. Many things can happen in a hypothetical future, what does that have to do with today's reality?
50656E6973 7y ago
>Because you can check. Open it up, see what it does. Use Wireshark to inspect traffic. 99.9% of users are incapable of doing this. >Imagine the scoop that "the mute switch does nothing" would be for a tech journalist. Google has already been caught doing this type of thing with location data: https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/13/google-keeps-a-history-of-your-locations-even-when-location-history-is-off/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/13/google-keeps-a-history-of-...