Introducing DolphinAttack: Hacking Digital Voice Assistants using High-Frequency Audio

Recently, researchers demonstrated how a hacker can command your voice assistant (Siri, Alexa, etc), using Ultrasonic sound — A.K.A sound that humans cannot hear.

DolphinAttack: Inaudible Voice Commands:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.09537.pdf

The researchers show how one can construct modulated audio snippets of which the voice assistant will respond to. These modulated audio snippets cannot be detected by human ears. These sounds are usually above 20,000Hz (10kHz).

In my opinion, this attack surface is about to lead to some interesting vectors if manufacturers cannot begin making consumer microphones that don’t listen above 20kHz.

I had the pleasure of attending DEFCON again this year.. Here are my TOP 5 talks from this year’s conference — along with the presentation slides. Enjoy.

Resources:

1) Popping a Smart Gun

Slides:
Popping a SmartGun

Video:
Youtube

2) Hacking Smart Contracts

Slides:
Hacking Smart Contracts

3) Jailbreaking (not “hacking” :D) Apple Watch

Slides:

Jailbreaking Apple Watch

Video:
Youtube

4) Evading Next-Gen AV using A.I

Slides:
Evading Next-Gen AV using A.I

5) See No Evil, Hear No Evil

Slides:
See No Evil, Hear No Evil

 

-Jovi