Using an off-the-shelf automotive radar sensor and a novel processing approach, Penn State researchers demonstrated they could detect the vibrations of a cell phone's earpiece and decipher what the person on the other side of the call was saying with up to 83% accuracy.
The demonstration, available in the 2022 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), reveals a significant security concern, according to Mahanth Gowda, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, and Suryoday Basak, doctoral candidate pursuing a degree in computer science and advised by Gowda.
"As technology becomes more reliable and robust over time, the misuse of such sensing technologies by adversaries becomes probable," Basak said. "Our demonstration of this kind of exploitation contributes to the pool of scientific literature that broadly says, 'Hey! Automotive radars can be used to eavesdrop audio. We need to do something about this.'"
To read more, click here.