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Marketer sparks panic with claims it uses smart devices to eavesdrop on people (arstechnica.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

At the risk of being called a neckbeard:

Before Cox Media Group sent its statement, though, CMG's claims of collecting data on "casual conversations in real-time," as its blog stated, were questionable. CMG never explained how our devices would somehow be able to garner the computing and networking power necessary to record and send every conversation spoken within the device's range in "real-time," unbeknownst to the device's owner. The firm also never explained how it acquired the type of access that requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant. This is despite CMG's blog claiming that with Active Listening, advertisers would be able to know "the second someone in your area is concerned about mold in their closet," for example.

In other words, they were hyping up capabilities they don't have.

Are you familiar with Wireshark and network sniffing? Instead of just wondering, why not look for yourself what these devices are sending out? It's not hard, and it's not a secret.

I'm not scared of them, because I know exactly how they work and exactly what's going across my network at all times.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are you able to dissect the packet contents tho? I can see the raw hex payloads of any packets on my network but that doesn't really tell me much about the data actually in them

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

You can at the very least tell when it is and is not transmitting data when you talk around it. You can set up experiments, like having a casual conversation with and without the "wake word" and compare packets. If it starts spewing data every time you talk, or if it remains mostly idle with just occasional DNS lookups or NTP updates and such, you'll know.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is there a way to route traffic from the router to Wireshark? Or would this require a router capable of like OpenWRT?

I have a stupid linksys that has awesome wifi power, but I can't seem to get custom firmware on it. I might be able to configure it as an access point.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

My router is a full on Linux server PC in a rack, so in my case I can just monitor all its interfaces directly on the box. I've got an entirely seperate VLAN for my IoT stuff (because a LOT of them are still very unsecure and I'm more scared of my network being compromised that way, by them just getting straight up hacked).

An easy way to do it in your case if you have a gimped ISP-provided router is to find an old hub (not a switch), plug a wireless access point into that, and have the device connect only to that access point. Then plug your laptop or computer into one of the other hub ports and you should be able to listen in on everything being sent across that hub.

More advanced switches might be able to do port-mirroring, which accomplishes the same thing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Haha I have of those thanks.