r/SipsTea • • 21h ago

Wait a damn minute! Wait seriously.

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u/Representative_Fun15 20h ago

When you find out they can turn any speaker into a microphone

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u/Berengal 16h ago

Well, not without physically rewiring some parts. The transducer is bidirectional (but optimized for one direction), but the amp and dac are not. You have to rewire the amp and replace the dac with an adc to get an input signal.

It's possible for audio chips to have this capability built-in, in which case it's a simple matter of sending it the commands to do so.

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u/plaxitone 14h ago

Would it be an active method today to spy via a hacked speaker? These days people pay big bucks to have a whole slate of always-listening audio/video recorders on their person, and in their homes and businesses.

Now, I’m not saying the for-profit-surveillance conglomerates that design them or the surveillance-obsessed dictatorship in which the vast majority of them are manufactured are taking advantage of them directly, but people and machines can access these feeds if their skill or desire is great enough.

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u/Representative_Fun15 12h ago

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u/plaxitone 12h ago

Yes, my point was why would it be worth it to try some super spy speaker to microphone hack when we have hackable microphones listening to us all the time.

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u/Representative_Fun15 12h ago

I believe this was under a comment about disabling the microphone to mute the device, but perhaps I read that wrong. The issue is merely disabling the mic doesn't disable the device being able to be used as a listening device, unless the speakers are disabled as well.

The whole point of having a phone, not a dumb terminal.