As computer hardware gets better and better, most of the benefits are readily apparent to users. Faster processors, less power consumption, and lower cost are the general themes here. But sometimes increased performance comes with some unusual downsides. A research group at the University of California, Irvine found that high-performance mice have such good resolution that they can be used to spy on a user’s speech or other sounds around them.
The mice involved in this theoretical attack need to be in the neighborhood of 20,000 dpi, as well as having a relatively high sampling rate. With this combination it’s possible to sense detail fine enough to resolve speech from the vibrations of the mouse pad. Not only that, but the researchers noted that this also enables motion tracking of people in the immediate vicinity as the vibrations caused by walking can also be decoded. The attack does require a piece of malware to be installed somewhere on the computer, but the group also theorize that this could easily be done since most security suites don’t think of mouse input data as particularly valuable or vulnerable.
Even with the data from the mouse, an attacker needs a sophisticated software suite to be able to decode and filter the data to extract sounds, and the research team could only extract around 60% of the audio under the best conditions. The full paper is available here as well. That being said, mice will only get better from here so this is certainly something to keep an eye on. Mice aren’t the only peripherials that have roundabout attacks like this, either.
Thanks to [Stephen] for the tip!
Clever! Happy to see this kind of creativity emerging. It could be defeated when the mouse is not in use with a 10 cent mirror at 45 degrees, hardware level data filtering to reduce dpi/noise, or masking with more noise. It’s really impressive how mice work these days.
It can be defeated by not placing your gaming mouse on a huge resonant box with speaker inside.
The NSA uses trackballs.
Interesting, but who needs a mouse with more than 300 dpi?
Gamers.
Well, “need*
Heh, good luck (or lack thereof) making any sense out of all the ambient noise interspersed with littletalks about everything under the sun in three languages simultaneously :] (full of idioms and all kinds of accumulated oddities that don’t translate into any root words).
Do dial my only mouse that’s permanently connected (others are almost always offline – and headless servers don’t have any) and listen to me, I guarantee never a dull moment.
Oh, it also has been my old undeveloped talent impersonating Elvis singing (among other selected voices I liked, like Mireille Mathieu and Barry Gibb) or imitating Glenn Miller’s “In The Mood” saxophone solo. That and lovely voice rendition of Boney M’s “Nightflight to Venus” opening drum line. In the middle of conversation about the bills that still need to be paid (though, I prefer singing Eliv’s “It’s Now or Never” instead) or weather turning glum next week (no, I never liked “Storms in Africa”, though, Enya’s “Orinoco Flow” line “Sail Away!” may suddenly emerge).
Fun times will be had. It promises to be about as entertaining as KGB listening on all calls from the US to USSR, Local KGB has no idea what kind of trouble they are asking for : -]
Old hat. Can be done with diagnostic feature of a HDD, too.
The vibrations in a room can be picked up that way.
Well, turns out Scotty was right all this time! XD
https://starringthecomputer.com/feature.html?f=4
Not really surprising. If you can pick up audio off a leaf or a chip bag then this should be relatively straightforward.
https://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/VisualMic/
Now, what will be really interesting is a way to use it productively as an accelerometer or as a way of building cheap lab equipment.