SonarSnoop: Active Acoustic Side-Channel Attacks

08/30/2018

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by   Peng Cheng, et al.

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We report the first active acoustic side-channel attack. Speakers are used to emit human inaudible acoustic signals and the echo is recorded via microphones, turning the acoustic system of a smart phone into a sonar system. The echo signal can be used to profile user interaction with the device. For example, a victim's finger movements can be inferred to steal Android phone unlock patterns. In our empirical study, the number of candidate unlock patterns that an attacker must try to authenticate herself to a Samsung S4 Android phone can be reduced by up to 70 can be easily applied to other application scenarios and device types. Overall, our work highlights a new family of security threats.