Hackers Can Use Your Headphones to Spy On You

Your headphones could be used as tools to spy on you, a new study has found. As Wired reports, researchers at Ben-Gurion University in Israel have developed new code that proves it is possible for hackers to re-purpose headphones into makeshift microphones and use them to secretly record audio, even if you have disabled or removed your computer’s internal mic.

As Wired points out, headphones are built on the same underlying electromagnetic principles as microphones, so the fact that headphones can be used as mics is not news. But what the Israeli researchers have found is that it is possible to change the RealTek audio codec chips found in numerous desktop and laptop computers from output to input without the user’s knowledge. This “allow[s] the malware to record audio even when the headphones remain connected into an output-only jack and don’t even have a microphone channel on their plug,” Wired reports. The researchers’ tests found that they could “record from as far as 20 feet away.”

Head researcher Mordechai Guri told Wired that “almost every computer today [is] vulnerable to this type of attack.” The potential for this hack will only be eliminated by replacing the RealTek chip in future computers. Guri’s team is also investigating if other audio codec chips or smartphones are susceptible to this hack.

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