Bugs in Google Chrome let websites listen to your conversations

Daily Caller ^ | 2:14 PM 01/22/2014 | Giuseppe Macri

[null and void]

Google’s popular Chrome search engine might be doing more than helping you find websites — it might be helping websites find and listen to you through the microphone in your computer.

TalAter.com reports the search engine’s voice recognition functionality can be compromised by websites that allow Chrome users to navigate their site via voice.

The problem is once you give Chrome permission, the websites you’ve visited retain that permission — even if you’re not on the site, allowing them to tap into your computer’s onboard microphone and listen in at any time.

Any site operator that chooses to adopt Chrome’s speech recognition ability and buy a $5 HTTPS security certificate will have the ability to hack visitors’ microphones. Typically when a user visits a site, they have to manually allow voice recognition, after which Chrome will display a visual indicator telling users the function is live.

What users won’t see is the secret window sites can immediately open up after voice recognition is activated, which stays open and under the control of the site even after the user manually disables the function, thanks to bugs in the search engine’s programming.

A speech recognition library maintainer discovered the bugs and reported them almost four months ago to Google’s security team, which subsequently fixed them two weeks later but never released the update to the public because of an “ongoing discussion” within the “Standards group.”

According to the maintainer, web standards organization W3C outlined behavior that would have corrected any such problem as far back as October 2012.

The source code for the bug is posted on GitHub, and a video showing the exploit in action was uploaded to YouTube Wednesday.

[Nifster]

just another reason I am glad I don’t use Chrome

[Cold Heart]

Thanks for the reminder. I’m hesitant to remove things because my wife’s smart phone has some programs here.

I was easily able to identify that the Google stuff was not needed on her phone & took it off.

Thanks

[MV=PY]

Voice recognition, both Google and Apple, occurs on their servers so you can bet they gather the data. This is an exploit of Google’s technology by web designers. They’ll close it because they don’t want others to have the data.

Same with Google Maps on smart phones. When you get directions, they know who you are (they know it’s your phone), where you are, and where you are going.

Same with Amazon Kindles. All your browsing activity goes through Amazon proxy servers and they collect it. It’s a data acquisition device and a point of sale system. Obviously they know your reading preferences.

The list goes on and on.

People are freely exchanging privacy for convenience, but most folks don’t know or don’t even care.

[opentalk]

The Google God

…Government, education, intelligence, robotics, healthcare, automobiles, military weapons, weather, space, media, cellphones, banking, flying.

You name it, Google is there cooking up a storm of business all over the planet.

Has there ever been a company that is so intertwined into the whole entire global economic fabric of society?

Has there ever been a company that has been able to, "legally," access so much information about so many people and so many businesses on a continuous basis?

Google Earth? Google Maps? Google everything.

[lewislynn]

I had my laptop set aside for quite awhile. When I turned it on I did a malware bytes scan...It had OVER 200 PUP all with a Google Chrome tag and I wouldn't have anything Google related anywhere near anything I own

So Bug? Yeah, that's it...
What do you call it?

[null and void]

It's a feature!

[Liberty Valance]

bttt