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Amazon Alexa Bugs Could've Let Hackers Install Malicious Skills Remotely

Amazon Alexa Bugs Could've Let Hackers Install Malicious Skills Remotely
Aug 13, 2020
Attention! If you use Amazon's voice assistant Alexa in you smart speakers, just opening an innocent-looking web-link could let attackers install hacking skills on it and spy on your activities remotely. Check Point cybersecurity researchers—Dikla Barda, Roman Zaikin and Yaara Shriki—today disclosed severe security vulnerabilities in Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant that could render it vulnerable to a number of malicious attacks. According to a new report released by Check Point Research and shared with The Hacker News, the "exploits could have allowed an attacker to remove/install skills on the targeted victim's Alexa account, access their voice history and acquire personal information through skill interaction when the user invokes the installed skill." "Smart speakers and virtual assistants are so commonplace that it's easy to overlook just how much personal data they hold, and their role in controlling other smart devices in our homes,"

Hackers Can Silently Control Your Google Home, Alexa, Siri With Laser Light

Hackers Can Silently Control Your Google Home, Alexa, Siri With Laser Light
Nov 05, 2019
A team of cybersecurity researchers has discovered a clever technique to remotely inject inaudible and invisible commands into voice-controlled devices — all just by shining a laser at the targeted device instead of using spoken words. Dubbed ' Light Commands ,' the hack relies on a vulnerability in MEMS microphones embedded in widely-used popular voice-controllable systems that unintentionally respond to light as if it were sound. According to experiments done by a team of researchers from Japanese and Michigan Universities, a remote attacker standing at a distance of several meters away from a device can covertly trigger the attack by simply modulating the amplitude of laser light to produce an acoustic pressure wave. "By modulating an electrical signal in the intensity of a light beam, attackers can trick microphones into producing electrical signals as if they are receiving genuine audio," the researchers said in their paper [ PDF ]. Doesn't this so

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future
Mar 21, 2024Operational Technology / SCADA Security
When you read reports about cyber-attacks affecting operational technology (OT), it's easy to get caught up in the hype and assume every single one is sophisticated. But are OT environments all over the world really besieged by a constant barrage of complex cyber-attacks? Answering that would require breaking down the different types of OT cyber-attacks and then looking back on all the historical attacks to see how those types compare.  The Types of OT Cyber-Attacks Over the past few decades, there has been a growing awareness of the need for improved cybersecurity practices in IT's lesser-known counterpart, OT. In fact, the lines of what constitutes a cyber-attack on OT have never been well defined, and if anything, they have further blurred over time. Therefore, we'd like to begin this post with a discussion around the ways in which cyber-attacks can either target or just simply impact OT, and why it might be important for us to make the distinction going forward. Figure 1 The Pu

Amazon Alexa Has Got Some Serious Skills—Spying On Users!

Amazon Alexa Has Got Some Serious Skills—Spying On Users!
Apr 26, 2018
"Alexa, are you spying on me?" — aaaa.....mmmm.....hmmm.....maybe!!! Security researchers have developed a new malicious 'skill' for Amazon's popular voice assistant Alexa that can turn your Amazon Echo into a full-fledged spying device. Amazon Echo is an always-listening voice-activated smart home speaker that allows you to get things done by using your voice, like playing music, setting alarms, and answering questions. However, the device doesn't remain activated all the time; instead, it sleeps until the user says, "Alexa," and by default, it ends a session after some duration. Amazon also allows developers to build custom 'skills,' applications for Alexa, which is the brain behind millions of voice-activated smart devices including Amazon Echo Show, Echo Dot, and Amazon Tap. However, security researchers at cybersecurity firm Checkmarx created a proof-of-concept voice-driven 'skill' for Alexa that forces device to indefin

Automated remediation solutions are crucial for security

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websiteWing SecurityShadow IT / SaaS Security
Especially when it comes to securing employees' SaaS usage, don't settle for a longer to-do list. Auto-remediation is key to achieving SaaS security.

Hackers Can Silently Control Siri, Alexa & Other Voice Assistants Using Ultrasound

Hackers Can Silently Control Siri, Alexa & Other Voice Assistants Using Ultrasound
Sep 07, 2017
What if your smartphone starts making calls, sending text messages, and browsing malicious websites on the Internet itself without even asking you? This is no imaginations, as hackers can make this possible using your smartphone's personal assistant like Siri or Google Now. A team of security researchers from China's Zhejiang University have discovered a clever way of activating your voice recognition systems without speaking a word by exploiting a security vulnerability that is apparently common across all major voice assistants. DolphinAttack (Demo): How It Works Dubbed DolphinAttack , the attack technique works by feeding the AI assistants commands in ultrasonic frequencies, which are too high for humans to hear but are perfectly audible to the microphones on your smart devices. With this technique, cyber criminals can "silently" whisper commands into your smartphones to hijack Siri and Alexa, and could force them to open malicious websites and even

Alexa, Are You Spying On Me? Not Really, Maybe, It's Complex!

Alexa, Are You Spying On Me? Not Really, Maybe, It's Complex!
Aug 02, 2017
Do you own an Amazon Echo? So are you also worried about hackers turning out your device into a covert listening device? Just relax, if there's no NSA, no CIA or none of your above-skilled friends after you. Since yesterday there have been several reports on Amazon Echo hack that could allow a hacker to turn your smart speaker into a covert listening device, but users don't need to worry because the hack is not simple, requires physical access to the device and does not work on all devices, as well. Amazon Echo is an always-listening voice-activated smart home speaker that is designed to play music, set alarms, answer questions via the Alexa voice assistant, and control connected smart home devices like WeMo, Hive and Nest. Hack Turns Amazon Echo Into Spying Device (But It's Complex) Now researchers from MWR InfoSecurity have demonstrated a hack, showing how hackers can exploit a vulnerability in some models of Amazon Echo to turn them into covert listening d
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