Google Chrome Flaw Sets Your PC's Mic Live 152
First time accepted submitter AllTheTinfoilHats (3612007) writes "A security flaw in Google Chrome allows any website you visit with the browser to listen in on nearby conversations. It doesn't allow sites to access your microphone's audio, but provides them with a transcript of the browser's speech-to-text transcriptions of anything in range. It was found by a programmer in Israel, who says Google issued a low-priority label to the bug when he reported it, until he wrote about it on his blog and the post started picking up steam on social media. The website has to keep you clicking for eight seconds to keep the microphone on, and Google says it has no timeline for a fix." However, as discoverer Guy Aharonovsky is quoted, "It seems like they started to look for a way to quickly mitigate this flaw."
Re:Google had to have put this in on purpose (Score:5, Informative)
Of course it's built in, it's part of the "ok google" keyword that Google Now (recently added to the Chrome browser) uses to detect an incoming command. The flaw is that transcript is kept for any length of time and that it's available to websites being viewed.
Re:Google had to have put this in on purpose (Score:4, Informative)
speech-to-text
Not sure why everybody keeps writing text-to-speech even though that makes no logical sense in this context :)
He only gave Google 2 days before going public? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Google Voice Search Isn't On By Default (Score:5, Informative)
they say "To improve processing of your voice input, Google may record a few seconds of ambient background noise in temporary memory at any time.". I take this to mean, they are recording constantly into a buffer at all times.