Smartphones are quite prone to security threats and can be easily hacked. Amidst the various ways through which a smartphone can be accessed by cybercriminals, a new way has been discovered, which can hack your smartphone using ultrasonic waves and a table. Sounds weird? Read on to know how it can happen.
A smartphone can be hacked via a table?
According to research conducted by a team at Washington University in St Louis, a smartphone's capability of listening to ultrasonic waves (inaudible to humans) can be exploited, that too, when it is kept on a table. It is suggested that this hack can be performed on flat surfaces such as a table made up of wood, metal, glass, and even plastic. Although, plastic didn't ensure it will work all the time.
Here's the video to show how the hack worked:
The researchers were able to use the ultrasonic waves to trick a smartphone's voice assistant and perform certain tasks. The tasked involved making calls, clicking pictures, retrieving passcodes in text messages, and adjusting the volume.
For this, the researchers fixed a microphone and piezoelectric transducer at the bottom of a table. They also used a waveform generator to produce relevant signals and all this took place with the help of the Surfing Attack software. The researchers used 17 smartphones out of which 15 were easily hacked.
The smartphones were from popular tech companies such as Motorola, Apple, Samsung, Google, and. Xiaomi. The devices included the Pixel 1, 2, 3, the Moto G5, Z4, the Galaxy S7, S9, and the iPhone 5, 5s, 6 Plus, and X. Devices such as the Huawei Mate 9 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus couldn't be hacked, possibly due to the curved rear design.
Since the hack worked, the researchers suggest users to use a thick smartphone cover to avoid the hacking. Users are also advised to not directly place their smartphones on a table but on a table cloth and to disable activation of Google Assistant or Siri from a locked display.
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