Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Chrome exploit lets websites keep listening after you close the tab


Toying around with voice-recognition apps, developer Tal Ater noticed something strange. Because of a quirk in Chrome's microphone settings, any site enabled for voice-recognition could use a pop-up window to keep recording almost indefinitely, hidden in the background. In Ater's demonstration, he closes the tab and continues talking, only to reveal a pop-up behind the main Chrome window, transcribing everything he says. It's an unsettling thought: could a malicious site use Chrome to listen in on users' offline conversations?


Ater first reported the bug in September


The core of the problem is Chrome's microphone permissions policy. Once you've given an HTTPS-enabled site permission to use your microphone in Chrome, every instance of...


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