As it turns out, it is possible to control both Siri and Google Now through silent radio signals from as far away as 16 feet.
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The newly spotlighted hack is detailed in a report from researchers at the French Network and Information Security Agency.
As reported by Wired, two reserachers on the team, Jose Lopes Esteves and Chaouki Kasmi, said the possibility that hackers could send these “parasitic” signals could have “critical security impacts” on the industry.
“The sky is the limit here”, said Vincent Strubel of ANSSI. “Everything you can do through the voice interface you can do remotely and discreetly through electromagnetic waves”. They can send radio waves, which can trigger voice commands and then it can be picked up by the headphone that is plugged into the phone, and the phone ends up being tricked into believing voice commands are being given.
The researchers argue this could be unsafe because a hacker could command Siri to visit a malicious website or call a paid phone number to make money.
For more advice on what to do when you review your phone’s security settings, please take a look at our popular article, Privacy and Security on Your Phone. Note also that a few phones – the new iPhone 6s, for example, are capable of verifying the user’s voice.
The electromagnetic waves are generated with the help of a computer running open-source GNU Radio, a USRP software-defined radio, an amplifier and an antenna. Google Now voice control isn’t accessible from the lock screen by default, however Siri is. And many potential victims would likely notice their phone receiving mysterious voice commands and cancel them before any mischief could be managed. To reach distances of 16 feet, something like a vehicle would be needed to house the larger hardware. The phone interprets these electrical signals as someone speaking into a microphone, giving the hackers full access to Siri functions. It has been revealed that there are ways to hack into Siri and you wouldn’t want that, would you? The target device interprets these as regular voice commands, allowing hackers to carry out anything a normal user can do.
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Once more, this is an intricate hack and it will certainly not pose great problems to vast majority of the users. Better electromagnetic shielding on the headphone cables would help (although this could prevent them from acting as the FM Radio antenna), together with allowing users to create their own custom words to wake Google Now.
