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Hello all, I'm Sriram, the first author of this paper. We were inspired by the idea of laser microphones as an audio eavesdropping vector, and tried to find a w
by frizensami 6y ago
Hello all, I'm Sriram, the first author of this paper. We were inspired by the idea of laser microphones as an audio eavesdropping vector, and tried to find a way to use LIDARs similarly, even though they're not designed for this purpose at all.
In the near future, what I think is scarier is the possibility of executing the same attack through self-driving cars LIDARs. Perhaps this would allow attackers to spy on conversations in cars that are driving beside you or stationary next to you at traffic lights.
- suifbwish 6y agoWhat materials did you find were most difficult to perform this attack on? I am guessing material like wood or rubber does not vibrate enough to observe a pattern? Also wouldn’t you be able to prevent this attack by having audio generators that generate near random audio signals that mask the data the attacker is seeking?
- frizensami 6y agoRight, good question. Anything that is very rigid and heavy doesn't vibrate enough when we play sound near it. I would say it's more about the thickness and weight of the target object than the material itself. For example, a very thin piece of wood would work much better than a wooden table leg. In the paper we actually test against ten different objects that are likely to be within reach of the robot vacuum cleaner. The difficulty with masking this attack is that you need audio playing at a comparable volume near to the legitimate speech sources, which might be pretty disruptive. In the case of background white noise generators, for legitimate audio playing at around 70 dB SPL, we don't lose much accuracy until the background white noise exceeds 75 dB SPL.
- suifbwish 6y agoVery interesting. All the new phones have lidar built in that works up to 30 feet away. In theory with the technology you applied here, it would be possible for them to eavesdrop without a microphone.This is almost as unsettling as the cameras that can visualize WiFi reflecting off human skin through walls. Its a matter of time before a commercial model hits the market. https://youtu.be/fGZzNZnYIHo https://youtu.be/fGZzNZnYIHo what a brave new world we are about to live in.
- Tepix 6y agoVery cool! Is there some way to tell from the outside whether or not the LIDAR is rotating?
- frizensami 6y agoThank you! For the Xiaomi Roborock S5, the plastic housing around the LIDAR makes it hard to see if it's rotating when you're standing above it. If you bend down and look at it side-on, you can tell whether it's rotating or not. Side-on: https://www.androidpolice.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Roborock-S6-in-action-gif.gif https://www.androidpolice.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Rob... Some feasible ways to stealthily perform the attack when the LIDAR is not rotating could be: a) attack when docked at the charging station, or b) hiding under furniture.
- Arech 6y agoHi Sriram! Nice job. BTW, did you investigate what data the roborock vacuum actually send to its servers?
- frizensami 6y agoHey! Actually, this was investigated previously by Dennis Giese here (https://recon.cx/2018/brussels/resources/slides/RECON-BRX-2018-Reversing-IoT-Xiaomi-ecosystem.pdf https://recon.cx/2018/brussels/resources/slides/RECON-BRX-20...). He also has a number of related talks (https://dontvacuum.me/talks/topics.html https://dontvacuum.me/talks/topics.html). Seems like quite a number of things including WiFi SSID and lat/long info are sent.
- Arech 6y agoThank you very much!