5 ms·

Google Voice Search Attack on Android [pdf]

62 points by borski 12y ago

anilshanbhag 12y ago
the attack is interesting, however what I am surprised is they have written 12 page paper on it ! the entire content of the paper can be rewritten to well within 4 pages
- b6 12y ago
  Isn't that around the normal compression ratio you find with academic papers? I almost always find them extremely verbose.
  - verbatim 12y ago
    Yes, this looks normal for a research/academic paper. It isn't a news article. The details are important.
ShaneWilton 12y ago
The same thing happened about a month ago with an Xbox One commercial that would turn on people's consoles: http://www.businessinsider.com/xbox-one-ad-turning-on-peoples-xbox-2014-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/xbox-one-ad-turning-on-people...
- diminoten 12y ago
  It's funny; without your example, I probably would have had to spend another 5-10 minutes figuring out exactly what this was.
  - ShaneWilton 12y ago
    Yeah, the research paper is a bit wordy. It's novel, though, because here it adds another vector for malware to inject into legitimate apps to hijack a phone, without requiring new permissions. I could see it becoming a serious concern in places like China, where 3rd party markets are much more popular, and republishing existing apps with malware is commonplace.
    - diminoten 12y ago
      That's actually a great point I hadn't thought of - if the attack uses English, your average Chinese person won't know what's being said and what's being taken.
      - tomkarlo 12y ago
        If you don't speak English, your phone probably isn't set to EN-US or another locale where the voice recognition would accept english. I'm guessing this depends on the voice reco being set to the right locale.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  At least for the Moto X it's somewhat tied to your own voice. But Google didn't want to wait until all devices had such chips, so they implemented the hot word thing without any voice training.
- codeka 12y ago
  There was another one where a guy with the name "XBox Shut Off" would run around griefing players in Call of Duty and when they yell at him to stop, accidentally initiate the "off" command. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGZeU4s28kk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGZeU4s28kk
  - Zircom 12y ago
    Reminds me of the way some friends and I came up with a way to trick people into logging out in WoW. There's the /logout command, which initiates the logging out sequence. However, there's also the /camp command, which does the same thing, but a fair amount of people don't know about it. Now, logging out normally takes 20 seconds, but if you're in one of the capitals, it's instant. So we would say in trade chat(a chat channel that's only visible to people in a capital) about how /camp sets down a campfire, unwitting players would try it out, and find themselves back on the character select screen. Just a bit of harmless fun, but you would not believe how upset people would get.
    - Relys 12y ago
      Back on the quake 3 engine I used to convince users that typing /disco would spawn a giant disco ball complete with lights and music. /disco is the same as /disconnect. Good times. :)
diminoten 12y ago
You'd have to be pretty quick to get information out of the phone before the user catches on, especially if you've just asked the user to watch a video. I just don't see this as an effective means of controlling a phone, when your primary means of "infection" involve user action. The paper even acknowledges this, though almost dismissively: "One potential limitation of GVS-Attack is that the victim may notice the voice command played by VoicEmployer and interrupt it." That's like, the whole reason this attack isn't very useful except in specific situations. No one's going to be running their botnet via GVS-Attack, that's for sure.
- iguana 12y ago
  It could be used as part of the process, for example to access a URL with an android exploit on it that the user would not normally visit. It could also detect periods of inactivity, or high background noise. This is a real attack vector not worth dismissing.
  - diminoten 12y ago
    No doubt, I just think the fact that the user is going to interfere with any direct exfiltration ruins this as a stand-alone attack. Your idea, however, is exactly the "missing piece" to this attack.
typpo 12y ago
Can anyone reproduce this? I am trying to command my phone via Chrome's web speech API but it doesn't pick up "OK Google." http://www.ianww.com/voice_assistant_abuse.html http://www.ianww.com/voice_assistant_abuse.html Seems like this attack could be trivially prevented by disabling speech recognition while speech synthesis is running. It looks like this may already be the case for the web speech api (or the synthetic voice is just too different from mine).
- davvid 12y ago
  Seems like this attack could be trivially prevented by disabling speech recognition while speech synthesis is running The paper mentions that they save the synthetic voice to .wav files first, and only later play them back, so this would not help.
gcb0 12y ago
Voice commands with via sound. news at 11.
NickWarner775 12y ago
How easy is it for hackers to be able to take control of your phones camera or speakers?
MattHeard 12y ago
This is only tangentially related to the topic, but I noticed the following note on the first page: > Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Is sharing to HN considered in the same vein as redistributing to a list?
- thesimon 12y ago
  Because HN is just linking to the file and the file is not uploaded on this site (in contrast to like attaching it to an email to redistribute), probably not.
Buge 12y ago
I wonder if it can dial 911 or other emergency numbers. If it was installed on a large number of phones then activated all at once and played one of several pre-recorded emergency type audio files, that seems like it could put serious pressure on emergency response teams.

62 points by borski 12y ago

the attack is interesting, however what I am surprised is they have written 12 page paper on it ! the entire content of the paper can be rewritten to well within 4 pages

b6 12y ago
Isn't that around the normal compression ratio you find with academic papers? I almost always find them extremely verbose.
- verbatim 12y ago
  Yes, this looks normal for a research/academic paper. It isn't a news article. The details are important.

ShaneWilton 12y ago

The same thing happened about a month ago with an Xbox One commercial that would turn on people's consoles: http://www.businessinsider.com/xbox-one-ad-turning-on-peoples-xbox-2014-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/xbox-one-ad-turning-on-people...

diminoten 12y ago
It's funny; without your example, I probably would have had to spend another 5-10 minutes figuring out exactly what this was.
- ShaneWilton 12y ago
  Yeah, the research paper is a bit wordy. It's novel, though, because here it adds another vector for malware to inject into legitimate apps to hijack a phone, without requiring new permissions. I could see it becoming a serious concern in places like China, where 3rd party markets are much more popular, and republishing existing apps with malware is commonplace.
  - diminoten 12y ago
    That's actually a great point I hadn't thought of - if the attack uses English, your average Chinese person won't know what's being said and what's being taken.
    - tomkarlo 12y ago
      If you don't speak English, your phone probably isn't set to EN-US or another locale where the voice recognition would accept english. I'm guessing this depends on the voice reco being set to the right locale.
higherpurpose 12y ago
At least for the Moto X it's somewhat tied to your own voice. But Google didn't want to wait until all devices had such chips, so they implemented the hot word thing without any voice training.
codeka 12y ago
There was another one where a guy with the name "XBox Shut Off" would run around griefing players in Call of Duty and when they yell at him to stop, accidentally initiate the "off" command. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGZeU4s28kk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGZeU4s28kk
- Zircom 12y ago
  Reminds me of the way some friends and I came up with a way to trick people into logging out in WoW. There's the /logout command, which initiates the logging out sequence. However, there's also the /camp command, which does the same thing, but a fair amount of people don't know about it. Now, logging out normally takes 20 seconds, but if you're in one of the capitals, it's instant. So we would say in trade chat(a chat channel that's only visible to people in a capital) about how /camp sets down a campfire, unwitting players would try it out, and find themselves back on the character select screen. Just a bit of harmless fun, but you would not believe how upset people would get.
  - Relys 12y ago
    Back on the quake 3 engine I used to convince users that typing /disco would spawn a giant disco ball complete with lights and music. /disco is the same as /disconnect. Good times. :)

diminoten 12y ago

You'd have to be pretty quick to get information out of the phone before the user catches on, especially if you've just asked the user to watch a video. I just don't see this as an effective means of controlling a phone, when your primary means of "infection" involve user action. The paper even acknowledges this, though almost dismissively: "One potential limitation of GVS-Attack is that the victim may notice the voice command played by VoicEmployer and interrupt it." That's like, the whole reason this attack isn't very useful except in specific situations. No one's going to be running their botnet via GVS-Attack, that's for sure.

iguana 12y ago
It could be used as part of the process, for example to access a URL with an android exploit on it that the user would not normally visit. It could also detect periods of inactivity, or high background noise. This is a real attack vector not worth dismissing.
- diminoten 12y ago
  No doubt, I just think the fact that the user is going to interfere with any direct exfiltration ruins this as a stand-alone attack. Your idea, however, is exactly the "missing piece" to this attack.

typpo 12y ago

Can anyone reproduce this? I am trying to command my phone via Chrome's web speech API but it doesn't pick up "OK Google." http://www.ianww.com/voice_assistant_abuse.html http://www.ianww.com/voice_assistant_abuse.html Seems like this attack could be trivially prevented by disabling speech recognition while speech synthesis is running. It looks like this may already be the case for the web speech api (or the synthetic voice is just too different from mine).

davvid 12y ago
Seems like this attack could be trivially prevented by disabling speech recognition while speech synthesis is running The paper mentions that they save the synthetic voice to .wav files first, and only later play them back, so this would not help.

gcb0 12y ago

Voice commands with via sound. news at 11.

NickWarner775 12y ago

How easy is it for hackers to be able to take control of your phones camera or speakers?

MattHeard 12y ago

This is only tangentially related to the topic, but I noticed the following note on the first page: > Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Is sharing to HN considered in the same vein as redistributing to a list?

thesimon 12y ago
Because HN is just linking to the file and the file is not uploaded on this site (in contrast to like attaching it to an email to redistribute), probably not.

Buge 12y ago

I wonder if it can dial 911 or other emergency numbers. If it was installed on a large number of phones then activated all at once and played one of several pre-recorded emergency type audio files, that seems like it could put serious pressure on emergency response teams.