Your smartphone just got smarter than you think

Smartphones may be smart enough to get you around your daily activities related to your personal or professional life. But did you know that your smartphone is actually smarter than you think?

Every smartphone comes equipped with sensors such as proximity, compass, gyroscope, and accelerometer and so on. Though these sensors are used by different applications to perform different tasks, they can be manipulated easily to do things other than they are designed for.

According to Wired, the Stanford University and the Israel defence research team ‘Rafael’ will be presenting a technique for using the sensors inside the smartphone for eavesdropping. The technique does not use the microphone of the smartphone, but makes use of the gyroscope.

Surprising? We were takes aback too as one can not even think that a gyroscope can be used as a microphone.

The gyroscope sensor inside the smartphone is basically used for pointing out the orientation of the smartphone and is mostly used for gaming. However, researchers discovered that the gyroscope sensors of the smartphone are very sensitive and can also pick up minute vibrations around it. This vibration can be tapped and converted into sound waves and transmitted back to the hacker.

At present, the researchers state that the vibrations are good enough for picking up a few words spoken near to the smartphone. Presently, the accuracy is around 84% which can identify the person’s gender from the sound/vibrations captured. 65% accuracy has been noted, which can tell the number of people in the room. The present research is good enough for eavesdropping and gathering small information such as passwords, codes, and few other details.

Most applications today usually ask / inform the user for permissions / access to parts of the smartphone such as GPS, microphone, Wi-Fi, data, etc. However, the gyroscope is given access by default since games require it.

So the next time you download a game from an unknown website or developer, make sure you are not speaking sensitive information near you smartphone.