NEW PRIVACY MENACE: Your Touch Screen Display is NOW a MICROPHONE!

THIS IS A NEW PRIVACY MENACE:

The Touch Screen Display on ANY Smartphone,
Tablet, Laptop or Desktop is NOW a MICROPHONE!

WARNING !!! WARNING !!! WARNING !!!

Your brand-new touch screen phone
or tablet is now a secret microphone
which can be hacked to form a transducer
which can STEAL your private conversations!

Touchscreen displays can be one of
the available types including Resistive,
Capacitive and Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW).

These above methods of detecting a finger
touch means that the touch screen on your
phone, tablet, laptop or desktop CAN NOW BECOME
A TRANSDUCER (otherwise known as a MICROPHONE!)
and with appropriate digital signal processing can
INTERPRET sound waves bouncing off your screen
and convert them to text for secret storage
and transmission across the Internet!

New technology has recently come forward
that can obtain the very noisy electrical signal
produced by the touch screen circuitry
in any touchscreen display and convert
it into audible sound.

By getting the UNFILTERED capacitance
or resistance signal BEFORE it is filtered
by the ADAC (analog to digital converter)
software and/or hardware, you can use
STATISTICAL METHODS to interpret the
VERY SLIGHT variations in pressure or
electrical readings coming off the
touchscreen display to create a
synthetic audio waveform that is
an AMPLIFICATION AND ESTIMATION
of what is said in any room.

How Touch Screens Work Wiki Link:
en.wikipedia.org...

Human speech has a fundamental frequency
range from 80 HZ to 255 HZ and when
translated to multi-frquency bands
will fall into a range between
300 HZ to 3400 HZ.

See Fundamantal Frequency definition:
en.wikipedia.org...

This fundamental frequency range means
that EVEN A CAPACITIVE TOUCHSCREEN
can be affected by acoustic waves that
affect the local atmosphere near the
surface of a touchscreen thus altering
the electrical conductance of the touch
screen's area of influence, which means
(especially in humid environments!) that
the SPURIOUS ELECTRICAL NOISE generated
as the acoustic waves from our voices hit
a capacitive screen EVER-SO-SLIGHTLY
affecting the electrical conductance properties
of the atmosphere near its surface.

This atmospherically-triggered spurious
electrical activity which is NORMALLY
filtered out using low-pass/high-pass
electrical signal filters built into
the display before being converted to
a 2D-XY coordinate for your computer,
is sent to special digital signal processing
software for further interpretation.

Since MANY NEWER TOUCHSCREEEN DISPLAYS
now have upgradeable software and now use
generic non-discrete circuit chips to do the
noise filtering, it means that CLEVER SOFTWARE
DEVELOPERS can intercept the unfiltered
noise signature coming off the touch screen,
and then run statistical analysis software to
try and recover the audio waveform which
can then be compressed or speech-to-text
filtered for later transmission.

This type of technology BEST WORKS upon
resistive and surface acoustic wave screens
BUT HAS BEEN RECENTLY TESTED AS WORKABLE
on capacitive touchscreen systems !!!!!!

This means governments and criminal
organizations can ADD at the touchscreen
factory or via secret remote installation,
the sofware code to intercept the unfiltered
electrical noise created when sound waves
hit the display's surface.

It now means that NO CONVERSATION IS PRIVATE
on your smartphone, your laptop, your desktop
or tablet computer if it's in your room where
you are talking about ANY sensitive material!

THIS IS SCARY STUFF !!!!

P.S. NO Sources For This Information
Will Be Discussed or Disclosed
AT ALL because those sources
are C-O-N-F-I-D-E-N-T-I-A-L
and will be KEPT THAT WAY
as per their request !!!!

a reply to: StargateSG7

You need to provide a link so the non-believers can source. I know what you say here to be factual.....others may not.
Its been common...though not widespread...knowledge for awhile now.

Thanks for posting.

MS

PS *Yes. There are post sources you can use...!

a reply to: StargateSG7

Yeah, a touchscreen is a microphone.

slind vibration can be detected through the screen and sent wherever it needs to be sent.

Makes perfect sense.

/sarcasm

ETA: Just a lot of sciency words put in some sort of order does not equate to science.

I don't have a smart phone or a touch screen device.

Does that mean I am safe?

Also, the average conversations I hear from most people are stupid and boring. Why would anyone want to steal that?

a reply to: TerryDon79


Having read the OP and your response, I have to wonder if you think you know more about the subject than the OP? If so, you need to share.


I must add as did you:


/sarcasm

c'mon...any first year electronics student can tell you that your ordinary computer speakers can be turned into microphones.....old tech

a reply to: mysterioustranger

Here are some sources:


This paper is the Electromagnetic Privacy Risk
associated with flat-screen monitors:

Electromagnetic Eavesdropping Risks
of Flat-Panel Displays
Markus G. Kuhn
University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory,
15 JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FD, United Kingdom

PDF Link:
www.cl.cam.ac.uk...

---

Discussion of TEMPEST hardware-oriented Information Security Standard:
en.wikipedia.org...

---

Royal Holloway Series 2011

Electronic surveillance through the
exploitation of compromising emanations

See link:
cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/pdf/RHUL_Frankland_Final.pdf

Richard Frankland originally obtained his
bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Science, but has
had a long-standing interest in information security.
Having recently completed hisM.Sc. at
RHUL, he is currently working towards a Ph.D. in
Electronic Voting security at Technische Universität
Darmstadt and CASED, Germany. His main
research interests include security formalisation,
standardisation and compliance.


Dr. StephenWolthusen is a lecturer
in information security at Royal Holloway with
research interests in information assurance and
the use of formal methods in security. He teaches
courses in Network Security and Digital Forensics.

----

TouchLogger: Inferring Keystrokes
On Touch Screen From Smartphone Motion

See Link:
www.usenix.org...

----

Fingerprint Attack against Touch-enabled Devices:

See Link:
www.cs.uml.edu/~xinwenfu/paper/SPSM12_Fu.pdf

====

As you can see there are MANY WAYS to intercept your data
from a smartphone, laptop, tablet and desktop BUT this is
the first time I HAVE HEARD OF using the display itself
as a microphone!

Hope they like listening to me singing to my cat about how wonderful he is!

a reply to: Aliensun

I've worked with computers, servers, laptops, printers, mobiles and a host of other things since the late 90s. I do know a little bit about tech lol.

The touchscreen material doesn't move enough to decipher sound waves. It's really that simple.

If the op would have said the speakers can be made into microphones, then I would have agreed, but even then it would take someone to physically change the wiring.

The even scarier part is that your smartphone has a camera and microphone as well. Allowing you to record video and even send it live to another person.

a reply to: StargateSG7

Hey, thanks. Im sure the members will appreciate the sources. As a former recording artist myself....we've discussed this many time over in and out of the studios the last couple decades as touch screen and digital tech took hold.

originally posted by: stormcell
The even scarier part is that your smartphone has a camera and microphone as well. Allowing you to record video and even send it live to another person.

Which is entirely possible and is used with some scams. Your phone gets a virus, takes a picture of you, locks the phone with encryption and it will only let you phone one number. When you dial that number you get told you have to pay X amount to unlock your phone.

Well, the thing about it is the smartphone already has an actual microphone in it. Basically, the entire "smartphone" is a huge privacy breach in just about every way you can imagine.

a reply to: StargateSG7

Yeah, no. Go read up on how acoustic transducers actually work and then you will realise that what you've posted is a load of nonsense.

a reply to: BrianFlanders

I too was forced at gunpoint to buy a smartphone.

a reply to: StargateSG7

None of your links have anything to do with the spurious claims in your OP.

originally posted by: TerryDon79
a reply to: StargateSG7

Yeah, a touchscreen is a microphone.

slind vibration can be detected through the screen and sent wherever it needs to be sent.

Makes perfect sense.

/sarcasm

ETA: Just a lot of sciency words put in some sort of order does not equate to science.

===

Actually, the touchscreen GLASS or PLASTIC
surface IS NOT being used as a transducer!

it is the electrical field disturbances created
by very slight changes in the localized conductivity
of the atmosphere near the surface of a capacitive
screen that cause the touchscreen to emit electrical
noise which can be amplified and interpreted so
that a audio waveform can be reconstructed.

A CAPACITIVE touchscreen requires you to
physically TOUCH the screen with an UNGLOVED
hand because on a technical basis your conductive
finger grounds-out or reduces the current
(MScEE's -- don't bother - I know!) being
applied to the display surface at that touched
location and the change in current can be read
and interpreted as a 2D-XY coordinate.
It takes a significant change in current
to trigger the touch display BUT there is
ALWAYS electrical noise that is being produced
during operation and even a relatively SMALL
acoustic waveform CAN affect local conductive
properties near the surface of the display creating
interpretable electrical signals.

a reply to: StargateSG7

Oh, right.

So when you said this....

NEW PRIVACY MENACE: Your Touch Screen Display is NOW a MICROPHONE!

...you were actually lieing?

ETA: I don't actually remember the last time glass was used on a display.

originally posted by: TerryDon79
a reply to: StargateSG7

Oh, right.

So when you said this....

NEW PRIVACY MENACE: Your Touch Screen Display is NOW a MICROPHONE!

...you were actually lieing?

ETA: I don't actually remember the last time glass was used on a display.

---

Technically, it is produces the results of a microphone
which is turning acoustic energy into electric energy.

However, in this case, the acoustic energy DOES NOT
vibrate the glass/plastic like the plate in a condensor
microphone or the ribbon of a ribbon mic, but rather
the acoustic energy disturbs the conductive
properties near surface of the touch screen
thus causing patterned electrical noise to be
induced into the touchscreen display circuitry
which requires digital signal processing to amplify
and interpret into digital audio waveforms.

---

P.S. All my Sony Broadcast BVM 4k display
and my LG 4k screens use GLASS on their surface!

a reply to: StargateSG7

So in other words you would need to make sound wave into electoral frequency then have something installed on your device to translate the electrical frequency into sound and something else to transmit it.

You know what that's called on a mobile phone?

A microphone.

ETA: The screen on your 4K isn't made from glass. Sorry.