Researchers with the University of Michigan and the University of Electro-Communications (Tokyo) have devised a new technique, called “light commands,” to remotely hack popular voice assistants, such as Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Facebook Portal, and Google Assistant.
The “light commands” attack exploits a design flaw in the smart assistants microelectro-mechanical systems (MEMS) microphones. MEMS microphones convert voice commands into electrical signals, but researchers demonstrated that they can also react to laser light beams.
The researchers demonstrated how an attacker can inject arbitrary audio signals to the target microphone by aiming an amplitude-modulated light at the microphone’s aperture.
Read more about it here.