Tuesday, August 1, 2017

New Hack Can Turn Your Amazon Echo Into A Secret Listening Device

Researchers on Tuesday described a physical hack of the Amazon Echo, which can turn the home assistant into a secret listening device, which would send the audio from the Echo's speaker to anyone on the Internet. The hack--which requires physical access to the Echo--essentially would turn the Echo into a way to wiretap a home. The researchers, at MWR Labs, said the hack takes advantage of an exposed debug port, and loading new firmware onto the device using an external SD card, to "root" the device. The researchers said the vulnerability works on 2015 and 2016 editions of the Amazon Echo, but not the 2017 edition.