Voice-activated technology is so vulnerable to attack that users should immediately disable speech recognition on all their devices, a security researcher at AVG has warned.
Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer at the anti-virus company, has carried out several experiments which revealed the new techniques hackers might use to gain control of voice-controlled devices.
He made the ominous prediction that a “thief outside the door” could take control of gadgets such as smart televisions or laptops from outside a target’s home, potentially burgling them without even smashing a window.
The vulnerability of technology which uses voice commands is likely to become an important issue in the coming years, as smartwatches and connected home devices grow in popularity and the technology becomes commonplace.
Just when you thought technology was making everything easier, now comes the potential for some creeper outside your window to give you a really embarrassing Netflix search history.
I admit, I love the new stuff and try everything when it first comes out, with very little thought about what new nightmare scenarios hackers might be working up. Voice activation was the sci-fi thing we all just expected to be a fact of life. Now I am ready to go to a stationery store and start writing letters to people again.
Still gonna need IMDB when I’m watching a movie though.
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