Smart Speaker | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A security researcher was awarded a bug bounty of $107,500 for identifying security issues in Google Home smart speakers that could be exploited to install backdoors and turn them into wiretapping devices. The flaws "allowed an attacker within wireless proximity to install a 'backdoor' account on the device, enabling them to send commands to it remotely over the internet, access its microphone feed, and make arbitrary HTTP requests within the victim's LAN," the researcher, who goes by the name Matt Kunze,  disclosed  in a technical write-up published this week. In making such malicious requests, not only could the Wi-Fi password get exposed, but also provide the adversary direct access to other devices connected to the same network. Following responsible disclosure on January 8, 2021, the issues were remediated by Google in April 2021. The problem, in a nutshell, has to do with how the Google Home software architecture can be leveraged to add a rogue Google us...

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,...

The problem is simple: all breaches start with initial access, and initial access comes down to two primary attack vectors – credentials and devices. This is not news; every report you can find on the threat landscape depicts the same picture.  The solution is more complex. For this article, we'll focus on the device threat vector. The risk they pose is significant, which is why device management tools like Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) are essential components of an organization's security infrastructure. However, relying solely on these tools to manage device risk actually creates a false sense of security. Instead of the blunt tools of device management, organizations are looking for solutions that deliver device trust . Device trust provides a comprehensive, risk-based approach to device security enforcement, closing the large gaps left behind by traditional device management solutions. Here are 5 of those limitations and how to ov...

Earlier this month, The Hacker News covered a story on research revealing how over 1300 Android apps are collecting sensitive data even when users have explicitly denied the required permissions. The research was primarily focused on how app developers abuse multiple ways around to collect location data, phone identifiers, and MAC addresses of their users by exploiting both covert and side channels. Now, a separate team of cybersecurity researchers has successfully demonstrated a new side-channel attack that could allow malicious apps to eavesdrop on the voice coming out of your smartphone's loudspeakers without requiring any device permission. Abusing Android Accelerometer to Capture Loudspeaker Data Dubbed Spearphone , the newly demonstrated attack takes advantage of a hardware-based motion sensor, called an accelerometer, which comes built into most Android devices and can be unrestrictedly accessed by any app installed on a device even with zero permissions. An ...

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...