Audio Hotspot Attack: An Attack on Voice Assistance Systems Using Directional Sound Beams and its Feasibility

We propose a novel attack, called an "Audio Hotspot Attack," which performs an inaudible malicious voice command attack, by targeting voice assistance systems, e.g., smart speakers or in-car navigation systems. The key idea of the approach is to leverage directional sound beams generated f...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on emerging topics in computing 2021-10, Vol.9 (4), p.2004-2018
Main Authors: Iijima, Ryo, Minami, Shota, Zhou, Yunao, Takehisa, Tatsuya, Takahashi, Takeshi, Oikawa, Yasuhiro, Mori, Tatsuya
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic beams
Acoustics
Amplitude modulation
Carrier waves
Feasibility studies
Frequency modulation
Halls
Internet of Things
Loudspeakers
Navigation systems
security
Sound
Speech recognition
Systems analysis
ultrasonic
Ultrasonic imaging
Voice
Voice assistance systems
voice commands attack
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Summary:We propose a novel attack, called an "Audio Hotspot Attack," which performs an inaudible malicious voice command attack, by targeting voice assistance systems, e.g., smart speakers or in-car navigation systems. The key idea of the approach is to leverage directional sound beams generated from parametric loudspeakers, which emit amplitude-modulated ultrasounds that will be self-demodulated in the air. Our work goes beyond the previous studies of inaudible voice command attack in the following three aspects: (1) the attack can succeed on a long distance (3.5 meters in a small room, and 12 meters in a long hallway), (2) it can control the spot of the audible area by using two directional sound beams, which consist of a carrier wave and a sideband wave, and (3) the proposed attack leverages a physical phenomenon i.e., non-linearity in the air, to attack voice assistance systems. To evaluate the feasibility of the attack, we performed extensive in-lab experiments and a user study involving 20 participants. The results demonstrated that the attack was feasible in a real-world setting. We discussed the extent of the threat, as well as the possible countermeasures against the attack.
ISSN:2168-6750
2168-6750
DOI:10.1109/TETC.2019.2953041