How Hackers Use Power LEDs To Spy On Conversations 100 Feet Away
(Aug 15, 2021; Forbes)
If you thought hackers being able to make use of any ordinary light bulb to spy on your conversations from 80 feet away was ingenious, wait until you see what they have come up with now.
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The researchers claim that Glowworm is a new class of TEMPEST attack: one with the ability to recover sound by the analysis of 'optical emanations' from the LED power indicator of a device. The invisible to the naked eye flickering of power LEDs, minute fluctuations in the intensity of that light caused by tiny voltage variations to speakers or the USB hubs they are connected to, during audio output. The methodology was tested on smart speakers and dedicated PC speakers with success where the LEDs were connected directly to the power line without any measures to counter the correlation between LED intensity and power consumption.
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Wow! They can do that with just LEDs??...soon privacy will become vestigial.
It's just experimental though (for now). I like that the author did address this, noting that there are far easier ways for your privacy to be compromised. (Yay! 😂)