The smartphones are smart enough to hear ultrasonic sounds, but, the present-day hackers are even smarter than it. The cybercriminals are trying to hack Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri on your phone using this ultrasonic functionality.
As per the research conducted by Washington University, the hackers can get these voice assistants to perform tasks they want it to do, by fooling those apps using ultrasonic sounds. By integrating the special features of acoustic voice transmission inside solid materials, they have framed a new attack, SurfingAttack. This attack allows the hacker to communicate with the voice commanders from a distant killing the need to be physically present.
Once it passes through the multiple interaction loops, it gains access to create new attacks by hijacking your mobile phones.
The SurfingAttack works best on tables made of solid materials like wood, glass and metal. It converts the voice into an inaudible frequency band and thereby uses an off-the-shelf PZT transducer to transmit the attack signals through the table.
The researchers had tested the success of this hack on 17 smartphones of different brands including Google, Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi and unfortunately, it passed all the tests.
According to the researchers using hardback covers like the ones made of wood is one of the ways to escape this hack.
