Burger King Runs Ad Triggering Google Home Devices; Google Shuts It Down (theverge.com) 191
Burger King unveiled a new advertisement earlier today designed to trigger users' Google Home devices. The ad specifically used the Google Home trigger phrase "Okay, Google" to ask "What is the Whopper burger?," thus triggering the Google Assistant to read off the top result from Wikipedia. But less than three hours after Burger King launched the ad, Google disabled the functionality. The Verge reports: As of 2:45PM ET, Google Home will no longer respond when prompted by the specific Burger King commercial that asks "What is the Whopper burger?" It does, however, still respond with the top result from Wikipedia when someone else (i.e., a real user) other than the advertisement asks the same question. Google has likely registered the sound clip from the ad to disable unwanted Home triggers, as it does with its own Google Home commercials.
Fuck you Google! (Score:5, Funny)
I wanted to hear more about this "Whopper" burger! What are you trying to hide Google???
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> What are you trying to hide Google???
Burger King should make a follow up commercial that poses that very question. Make into a conspiracy. The public seems fond of those nowdays.
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or even "hamburger royale".
I think you mean "Royale with cheese".
1984 CFAA violation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't this basically a blatant violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse act? What if a small timer had done this and not a mega corporation?
Re:1984 CFAA violation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't this basically a blatant violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse act? What if a small timer had done this and not a mega corporation?
Essentially it is an act of accessing a computer system belonging to somebody else, without their permission. I imagine the legal description of hacking could be stretched around this well enough to take it to court in a country like the US where litigation rules.
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Isn't this basically a blatant violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse act? What if a small timer had done this and not a mega corporation?
Essentially it is an act of accessing a computer system belonging to somebody else, without their permission. I imagine the legal description of hacking could be stretched around this well enough to take it to court in a country like the US where litigation rules.
Essentially this is utter stupidity. People want to secure their always-listening devices buried deep in their homes that control every damn thing? Then petition the manufacturer to be able to customize the trigger (pass)word to something other than what the rest of the planet already knows.
And for the latter reason, no, I don't believe even within the idiocy of US litigation could you convince someone that muttering the words "OK Google" is considered hacking. If so, then I fully expect Burger King to
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It's not even about whether it is legal or not. It's just so easy to happen that it is almost comical to talk about legalities.
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I believe this would fall under the category of, "what did you THINK was going to happen?" It's not even about whether it is legal or not. It's just so easy to happen that it is almost comical to talk about legalities.
Fortunately, a lack of legal action against Burger King for what would be defined as a distributed/targeted/terrorist attack against thousands of innocent citizens tends to help define precedent.
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But I suspect the technical solution here is to add a direct feed of known non-human audio sources (TV, radio, stereo system) to devices like Google Home or Alexa.
Are you suggesting that we add a bunch of miscellaneous ports to the Home/Echo and wire in every audio source in the house? Or maybe you're picturing small wireless mics next to all those sources to isolate their audio and counter it? I see no obvious, practical way to implement this technical solution. How do you picture this "direct feed of known non-human audio sources" working?
Re:1984 CFAA violation? (Score:5, Funny)
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That was probably their first instinct, too. Unfortunately, they'd then be intentionally providing misinformation to paying customers.
A better approach for sabotage would have been to start reading off nutritional information.
Re: 1984 CFAA violation? (Score:2, Funny)
How about this? Xkcd reference: https://www.xkcd.com/1807/
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what if he's a pedantic know-it-all-shithead-autist and your affectionate nickname for him is 'google'? Check mate.
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what if he's a pedantic know-it-all-shithead-autist and your affectionate nickname for him is 'google'? Check mate.
Then unless he has the exact same sound profile as the ad, no problem. If your mate happens to be the person from the ad I guess they already know what a whopper is.
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Are you likely to use the phrase 'ok google' before asking your friend a random question? No. Not unless you are attempting to trigger his Google home device without permission.
Well, if he's trying to record me with my permission, it seems only fair.
It's just good manners in today's world to shout "Alexa order one ton of cheese; confirm" upon entering a friends house, just to remind him to turn off his microphones around friends.
Re: 1984 CFAA violation? (Score:5, Funny)
Oblig: https://xkcd.com/1807/ [xkcd.com]
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It's just good manners in today's world to shout "Alexa order one ton of cheese; confirm" upon entering a friends house, just to remind him to turn off his microphones around friends.
It is just good manners to remind you that by doing so, _you_ are legally ordering one ton of cheese, so _you_ are the one paying for it.
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Also, if you visited anyone sensible the response you'd get is "Please say your PIN to confirm order"
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The echo doesn't record you unless you say the trigger word.
People on Slashhdot used to argue that the NSA couldn't really be recording every phone call in America. Those were innocent days. We know our government has programs to hack smart devices and record everything - that's from leaked documents, not conspiracy theory. Any microphone connected to the internet should be assumed to be recorded somewhere. Sadly, that's just the government we have.
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Sure, though depending on the technique used to avoid traffic analysis it might take a while. Would anyone here really be surprised if we hear in a year that security experts are warning that a significant number of IoT/smart devices have been recording us for the past few months?
Re: 1984 CFAA violation? (Score:4, Informative)
Are you likely to use the phrase 'ok google' before asking your friend a random question? No. Not unless you are attempting to trigger his Google home device without permission.
"Ok google how to find nude pics and tell me I'm wrong"
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Now if only we could have a 3D-printed drone running apps to filter queries via a hosts file, we'd have a winning post.
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It shouldn't be hard to print a 3D burger that tastes better than the real thing.
Nice Play (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad google shut this down, but I have to admit I'm rather impressed with Burger King on this one. Nicely played.
Re:Nice Play (Score:4, Insightful)
Google should have played back by pushing something like this [sfgate.com] to the top of the result list, and having Assistant read out the first paragraph from there.
Re:Nice Play (Score:5, Funny)
...although leaving it as Wikipedia would probably have been more effective at warning advertisers off this tactic.
However, prior to the ad's premiere, the article had been modified by a user allegedly tied to the company, so that Google's automatically-generated response to the query would be a detailed description of the Whopper burger that utilized promotional language. The edits were reverted for violating Wikipedia's policies discouraging "shameless self-promotion". Furthermore, the snippet became the target of vandalism, which caused Google Home to read off statements suggesting that the sandwich's ingredients included "rat meat", "toenail clippings", and a "medium-sized child".
Re:Nice Play (Score:5, Interesting)
from the article: ... its high amount of fat, cholesterol and sodium makes it an unhealthy food...
Well, not to defend Burger King (and a bit off topic), but if you're getting the appropriate amount of exercise your body won't metabolize the fat and cholesterol, and the original research that claimed salt is bad for you was flawed (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt/); posting this kind of counter attack could be considered – by some – as misguided. Then again, most people don't get sufficient exercise and the fat and cholesterol is bad for them.
It wasn't uncommon in the early days of the web for people to shift the bandwidth load of their websites by linking to content on other people's web servers. When those other people figured out this was happening to them, they would replace the content with something else that the bandwidth "thief" didn't intend, e.g. smut, much to the bandwidth thief's embarrassment.
A better counter attack, IMO, would have been to replace the content Burger King was expecting with something else, e.g. an audio clip of Meg Ryan's faux orgasm from "When Harry Met Sally" or a clip of HAL saying "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
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A better counter attack ... would have been to replace the content Burger King was expecting with ... an audio clip of Meg Ryan's faux orgasm from "When Harry Met Sally"
But you do that right AFTER buying a bunch of BK stock. If a Whopper can do that (orgasm, even if fauxed) then who WOULDN'T want one?
Then again, expect to be sued by MAKK (Mothers Against Knowledgeable Kids): Mommy, why is Alexa moaning? Did she eat too many Whoppers and now her stomach hurts? Or does the TV just like to watch?
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A better counter attack, IMO, would have been to replace the content Burger King was expecting with something else, e.g. an audio clip of Meg Ryan's faux orgasm from "When Harry Met Sally"
Note that that clip ended in a woman saying "I'm having what she is having". Don't think BK would object.
Re:Nice Play (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Nice Play (Score:5, Funny)
Why would Google beg to get sued by Apple for copying Siri?
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Why would Google beg to get sued by Apple for copying Siri?
Do apple have a patent on not understanding things now? Or do people think every fucking word they type can never be used again in that order?
Re:Nice Play (Score:5, Funny)
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Rather than shut it down, Google should have simply changed the response to something on the order of
...legally actionable libel.
Do you people think before you post these comments? Wait, I forgot, this is Slashdot. I must be new here.
Absolutely the only thing Google can get away with legally is simply ignoring the trigger. Otherwise they'll be illegally abusing their market position.
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Is that you Sheldon? Your sarcasm detector isn't working well today.
Before you expect people to laugh, check to be sure that you are in fact funny.
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Rather than shut it down, Google should have simply changed the response to something on the order of
...legally actionable libel.
Do you people think before you post these comments? Wait, I forgot, this is Slashdot. I must be new here.
Absolutely the only thing Google can get away with legally is simply ignoring the trigger. Otherwise they'll be illegally abusing their market position.
So is it libel or is it abusing market position? A reasonable belief that a statement is true is usually good enough to shut down a libel case, and that seems likely here. Google is not in the fast food business, so it's dominant position in the computer/web-ad market is irrelevant. You can only abuse your market position in the market you operate in. Did you even think before you posted your comment?
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So you want Google to blatantly editorialize the answers to your questions? Wow.
If you want better results search yourself you lazy turd and don't rely on the top result.
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The real message is that all these people can get into IoT.
Re: Nice Play (Score:2)
"Nicely played" as in "committed a felony"?
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No felonies where committed. What was done was a pretty good hack if you think about it. Burger King managed to hack a device over a TV commercial. That was actually very clever.
I'm glad google shut this down because there probably would have been copy cats. But again, no felonies where committed.
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"pressure cooker bomb" might be hotter but I'm honestly not sure
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Ethics and advertising have never coexisted.
CueCat all over again (Score:4, Interesting)
The company that made the CueCat wanted to be able to do just this eventually. When I worked at Radio Shack in the early 00's we gave these stupid things away. Information coming down the pipeline said they eventually intended to make a device that connected to the PC and would respond to audio cues in advertisement on TV and open a browser to the product page. At the time it sounded retarded, like, "who the fuck would want such a thing?" Laugh's on me I guess, everyone wants an Echo or Home now.
Re:CueCat all over again (Score:5, Insightful)
Laugh's on me I guess, everyone wants an Echo or Home now.
"Everyone wants an Echo" isn't the same thing as "Everyone wants a device that can be manipulated by an advertisement in a movie, TV show, or web video".
Disclaimer: I have no desire to purchase either an Echo or a Home - I just don't see any significant advantage to owning them, while I do see a lot of potential disadvantages.
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Re:CueCat all over again (Score:5, Insightful)
You kind of should belittle people who want that shit it it's current state, in opposition to the marketing that tells them they are special if they buy that shit. Counter marketing is fair and reasonable in today's market place. Purposeful hacking by Burger King, well, technically it is a computer crime, although the bar for security is exceedingly low, they still did intentionally hack and abuse a computer network, that network being between the consumer and Google, this done in order to steal advertisement time worth millions of dollars. So really quite naughty and a criminal offence, technically.
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I would go further: I would say that anyone who understands the severe harm to both privacy and free speech that these things cause almost has a moral obligation to educate potential victims about that harm, whenever possible.
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Wow. A smart home sounds like an awful lot of money for very little benefit. I honestly never cared for all the gimmicky stuff individually, and thought perhaps the synergy of it all would add up to something more, but... literally everything you described, I have alternatives for that don't require a smart house.
I have a programmable thermostat -- very versatile, and no need for a Nest. I have friends with a Nest... and they aren't all that impressed with it even after months of training it. I have a
Re: CueCat all over again (Score:5, Insightful)
You can say, "Alexa, goodnight," and all the lights turn off, the tv turns off, any electronics turn off, the AC adjusts, and Alexa makes sure the doors are locked and reports their state.
And then you change your wifi password and spend 3 days chasing down random things you forgot about.
Then the over priced door lock breaks, and you don't even notice for 3 months. It mean... it says it was locking and unlockng but the bolt wasn't moving.
Then some sensor flakes out and turns your heat off. And worse, you turn it on manually... and then it promptly gets signaled to turn off a few seconds later. And your not home... and your wife has to unplug the nest to stop it from shutting the heat off until you can get home to figure out what is wrong.
Meanwhile the asshole kids next door figured out how to take remote control of your smart TV...
While watching tv, you can use Alexa to pause, play, skip forward/backward, and change the volume, etc.
Unless you turn it up to high by accident and Alexa can't hear you telling it to turn it back down.
You can have home presets, where you can say, "Alexa, it's party time," and all the Hue lights set their colors and brightness, the AC turns adjusts, party music fills the house, and all the TV's in the house turn on and tune in various sports channels.
And then your son storms upstairs pissed that you screwed up his guild raid with your bullshit ... again.
With Alexa, you can control anything the Logitech Harmony Elite can control. So, anything with IR and many WIFI controlled devices.
Yeah, I have one of those. I love it. But its also pretty fallible. It'll end up on the wrong TV input, it'll get its states mixed up 'toggle power' on the wrong thing or put the HTPC which was awake to sleep when i select it. No big deal, tap tap tap... problem fixed. I really don't want to talk to it... or have 3 people in the room all trying to fix it by issuing voice commands.
Once you can trigger events across your home with your voice and not just turn on a light, you just can't go back.
Yeah, lets come back to this one.
You can have home presets, where you can say, "Alexa, it's party time," and all the Hue lights set their colors and brightness, the AC turns adjusts, party music fills the house, and all the TV's in the house turn on and tune in various sports channels.
I pretty much guarantee you that you spent more time setting that mode up, then I'd ever get back using it.
And THAT is where home automation is at. Its a great toy for the person who WANTS to play with it; who enjoys spending hours setting up programs they'll only use twice. Who enjoys debugging all the glitches. Who's ok when a power surge blows $500 worth of smart light bulbs. Who doesn't mind doing a firmware upgrade on his front door lock.
But for the average person, no, its not like caller id. Caller id is simple and just works. And when it fails, it just says unknown number and you have to pick up the call to find out who it is or let it go to voice mail. Home automation is a rube-goldberg machine that is a lot of fun if you like building and maintaining rube goldberg machines -- but its not practical and it frequently fails in pretty spectacular ways.
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I pretty much guarantee you that you spent more time setting that mode up, then I'd ever get back using it.
I'm about break-even on my Hue bulbs. It took awhile to set them up to mimic a sunrise in the morning, and a sunset in the evening. Living decently far north, I find it's really helpful during the winter to have a stable sunrise and sunset despite the darkness outside. I've had the same settings for 2-3 years now, and it's really, really nice. I wake before my alarm most mornings, and as the house "sunsets", it triggers me to go to bed at the same time every night.
But some time ago they released an
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Caller id is simple and just works. And when it fails, it just says unknown number and you have to pick up the call to find out who it is or let it go to voice mail. Home automation is a rube-goldberg machine that is a lot of fun if you like building and maintaining rube goldberg machines -- but its not practical and it frequently fails in pretty spectacular ways.
I've had a Z-wave HA system going for around 8 years. It is like caller ID - if the controller fails, I revert to using the wall switches. Z-wave can be a bit finicky to set up initially but the only real failure modes I've had are dead switches, which I've had actually more of with my bath fan timers that are not part of the HA system. I've had zero problems with door locks. They're great not because I can "unlock it with my phone", but because it makes managing the entry codes easy (example: give
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Also, for my lock at least, there's an independent sensor that detects if the door is locked
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You missed the two biggest issues:
First, half of this shit ships with backdoors from the factory and the other half gets hacked five seconds after plugging it in, which means that not only will you be contributing to a botnet, the device logs (from which your home/away schedule could be deduced) and the recordings of everything you say would be available to every criminal on the Internet.
Second, all of this shit is explicitly designed to make those logs and recordings available for companies to analyze your
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Yup. I missed those although i alluded a bit to them getting hacked.
I also missed that obsolescence angle... that the door lock in a house built in 1950 still works fine, but your new IoT lock probably won't be compatible with the next generation or 3's 'hub' (within 5-10 years), the old app that came with the old hub won't work your new phone... the app that works with your new phone won't work with old hub; the old hub and the new hub won't work with eachother... etc etc etc...
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I remember grabbing one of those because it was a free hackable barcode scanner [cexx.org], but I never got around to actually doing anything with it. I'm pretty sure I still have it in the bottom of a drawer somewhere.
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They were pretty handy at the school I worked at. Getting new equipment was a red tape nightmare and we needed some more barcode scanners in the library. Hooray for CueCat.
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I remember grabbing one of those because it was a free hackable barcode scanner, but I never got around to actually doing anything with it. I'm pretty sure I still have it in the bottom of a drawer somewhere.
This is not about the cuecat barcode reader, but about the... I don't know, I forget what they called it, but it was just an audio cable which ran from your TV to your PC. And your PC would run some program which would listen to the audio out from your TV, and when it detected certain cadences it would load data from the audio stream and display an ad on your PC. I got one because it was a free long mono audio cable. Maybe with a pass through RCA on both ends. I may still have it, too, if I haven't carved i
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Shouldn't the title read.... (Score:5, Insightful)
... "Malicious attackers in Burger King's advertising department use vulnerability in Google home to make it do stuff its owner didn't request".
It's a bit rich to call it an ad and chuckle about.
It's a lot scary that it's possible for a remote attacker to ask these devices en masse to do something with nothing more than a broadcast ad. For now it was reading a wikipedia page. What happens when scumvertisers and other malicious adversaries figure out a way to make it spend money without your consent? Or to report to them that you have heard the ad, or worse.
Re:Shouldn't the title read.... (Score:5, Informative)
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Google is already working on being able to distinguish people by their voices, so that they can support multiple users. One of the big limitations on current voice assistants is that they are single user, and it's not like you can just have one each right next to each other in a multi-user household, and there are privacy issues...
To be frank they should have launched with such basic features in place.
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It's a bit rich to call it an ad and chuckle about.
No, that's exactly what it is.
It's a lot scary that it's possible for a remote attacker to ask these devices en masse to do something with nothing more than a broadcast ad. For now it was reading a wikipedia page. What happens when scumvertisers and other malicious adversaries figure out a way to make it spend money without your consent? Or to report to them that you have heard the ad, or worse.
It's not scary at all.
That risk already exists, is absurdly obv
Re:Shouldn't the title read.... (Score:4, Interesting)
No, that's exactly what it is.
No, it's intentional, premeditated unauthorized use of a computer of computing device. You can bet the farm that nobody authorized Burger King to assume control of their Google device and cause it to access the Internet. That it was in the form of a broadcast advertisement for a large corporation doesn't make it any less heinous to my mind.
That risk already exists, is absurdly obvious, and has been made VERY clear on both tech forums and mainstream media. Anyone with ANY clue about phone security, and this includes people who lock their phone, has already disabled the voice feature so it isn't an issue for them.
Anyone with any clue about security already avoids these things. Many with no clue about security are buying them up for the shiny factor. It is scary because the sort of people who don't have a clue are the sort of people buying them. Even people who care about security are buying and using voice activated devices.
It's about as scary as the thought that if you leave your house front door open someone could just walk in.
The average person understands that risk quite well. They might not assess its severity correctly, but they understand it. The average person does not understand the risk of these smart devices, and they remain wilfully ignorant when more knowledgable individuals try to educate them. Now we have a set of devices that can potentially be turned into a bot net en masse just by a radio or tv broadcast and the usual owner of such a device doesn't have a clue that it's even possible. Hell, they could take all the right precautions (firewall, apply updates, isolated segments, etc) and still be had. This (https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/03/smart-tv-hack-embeds-attack-code-into-broadcast-signal-no-access-required/) kind of attack springs to mind.
It's scary because Burger King will probably get away with this, paving the way for other corporates to try on the same shit.
It's scary because "OK Google" isn't necessarily the only trigger word. The attacker only needs to convince the trigger algorithm. If they discover a sound or sounds that are innocuous but trigger it then they can trigger devices without being obvious about it.
It's scary because these devices have reached a critical mass large enough that a corporation took notice and exploited them.
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ou can bet the farm that nobody authorized Burger King to assume control of their Google device and cause it to access the Internet.
Every single person who installed one of these listening devices authorized every random stranger with a voice to command it to do any damn thing they wanted because that's how the device works. You've made it clear anyone is welcome to control your home by installing it in the first place!
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Every single person who installed one of these listening devices authorized every random stranger with a voice to command it to do any damn thing they wanted because that's how the device works. You've made it clear anyone is welcome to control your home by installing it in the first place
Sounds like an autistic nerd who cannot distinguish between the ability to do something and the authorisation to do something.
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It's scary because Burger King will probably get away with this, paving the way for other corporates to try on the same shit.
Legally this is unlikely. The first case of this was a cute example of using something in the house to extend the advertisement. Now that the example is out the company has already put effort into preventing it happening again. This makes any future such advertisement a direct attack against efforts from another company to limit it and completely changes what was at first cute to an actual arms race that will eventually find its way into the courts.
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It's scary because "OK Google" isn't necessarily the only trigger word. The attacker only needs to convince the trigger algorithm. If they discover a sound or sounds that are innocuous but trigger it then they can trigger devices without being obvious about it.
I feel the solution is to fingerprint each voice that says OK Google. If the voice is not recognized, or if the device has been rebooted or even if a certain amount of time has passed, the device should ask the user to supply their passphrase before proceeding. All of these things should be stored and processed locally.
That would effectively stop this form of attack, while giving me the opportunity to finally unlock a device with "Solent Green is People"
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I feel the solution is to fingerprint each voice that says OK Google. If the voice is not recognized, or if the device has been rebooted or even if a certain amount of time has passed, the device should ask the user to supply their passphrase before proceeding. All of these things should be stored and processed locally.
An attack like this can be defeated even without that, since the device phones home on every activation. If the same voice print is saying "Ok, Google" in multiple locations, you just disallow all but the first one. And if a new one comes in before the "user" could reasonably have gotten there (based on the locations of the devices) then you not only ignore it, but flag the voice as belonging to a malicious actor.
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... "Malicious attackers in Burger King's advertising department use vulnerability in Google home to make it do stuff its owner didn't request".
It's a bit rich to call it an ad and chuckle about.
It's a lot scary that it's possible for a remote attacker to ask these devices en masse to do something with nothing more than a broadcast ad. For now it was reading a wikipedia page. What happens when scumvertisers and other malicious adversaries figure out a way to make it spend money without your consent? Or to report to them that you have heard the ad, or worse.
If you're stupid enough to allow a device to "spend money" secured with nothing more than a passphrase known to the entire planet, then you probably get what you deserve.
We've always had a problem with hacking due to poor passwords that people chose. Naturally the obvious answer was to ensure everyone using these devices has the same fucking password. Brilliant stupidity at it's finest.
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It's a lot scary that it's possible for a remote attacker to ask these devices en masse to do something with nothing more than a broadcast ad.
Alexa, kill all humans.
1807 (Score:4, Funny)
Relevant xkcd [xkcd.com]
Fridge Horror (Score:2)
1. Record someone's voice without permission.
2. Build custom TTS.
3. Use your victim's voice to give orders to other IoT devices.
4. ???
5. Profit!
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4. Buy things from yourself in your victim's name.
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Google search is an indispensable Cell phone tool (Score:2)
For me. Quick and on the money. I have tested it to see if it will open when asleep - Nope.
This AD is a cheap trick, yet shows the risk of using Google home or any other device of it's nature.
A Whopper is a lie (Score:2)
Whopper is defined as "a gross or blatant lie."
Why the google doodad would talk about hamburgers when asked to define a straightforward word in relatively common use is beyond my understanding. Had they provided a correct answer (and not a hamburger advertisement) this would not have been an issue.
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At one time, not long ago, if you did a search for "Fortune" Google would return links for the BSD fortune program.
Now it returns links to Fortune magazine. SEO changed the internet to a model of whoever can push stuff hardest in your face, and Burger King won here.
A great demonstration (Score:4)
Of why it's an awful idea to force all devices to listen out for the same fucking activation line. Some with "always on listening".
Will google now wake-up and let us train the assistant to trigger at whatever we want? -later matching it only to our voice so it's less likely to activate even if someone knows what we say to activate it.
I like the phrase; *white noise breathing* "Luke, this is your father." -let's use that.
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I'd rather give the assistant a name and *mostly* have it answer only when my voice addresses it.
It would probably be useful to have security settings that would allow others to run some searches. We're working towards a 'Jarvis' interface, right? If it just talks to me, that's actually rather limiting.
Marketeers (Score:2)
On the scale of humanity there's normal people, sociopaths, psychopaths, then a large gap, then finally marketeers.
Better Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Google should have cheated on the sort algorithm and put in their own add in top place: "A slab of muscle tissue from an immature castrated bull between two lumps of overheated grains stripped of their nutritional components, accompanied by...."
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Well, at least they're keeping up with tech... (Score:2)
Burger King's ad campaigns have been the laughing stock of the advertising world forever. I was studying marketing back in the 80s, in college, and had a subscription to Advertising Age (the leading trade publication of the industry). At that time, Burger King's campaign revolved around the phrase, "Burger King. Sometimes you just gotta break the rules." It was considered so ridiculous that Advertising Age held a contest to see if anyone could come up with anything even more insane. Finalists in the to
IFTTT to the rescue. (Score:2)
IF THIS(GoogleAssistant("What is the Whopper burger"); say("A flaming piece of feces.")
THEN(trigger some dummy action like sending a notification)
Problem solved.
Rich (Score:2)
"Waaaah, I pay for television to deliver me advertising and then it communicated with the device I bought for spying and advertising and the device advertised to me!"
The amount of sympathy I have for these brainiacs could be measured with electron scanning microscope.
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So, as long as something is sleazy, it gets to break the rules? I'd think that we'd have to hold such enterprises to the rules more strictly.
You're blaming the victim.
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Are they really victims if they bought into it? It's like calling a person into BDSM a victim of violence. They're not victims, they love it. If they didn't, they wouldn't partake in it.
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I see your XKCD and raise you Dilbert [dilbert.com].
Re:Next ad will target Alexa (Score:4, Funny)
I see your static media and raise you an animated Dilbert: https://youtu.be/7MqhBL9eEts?t... [youtu.be]
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I fold.
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I didn't see the ad, and I don't have Google Home. I probably would have thought it was funny, chuckled, then thought about the ramifications and thought "Holy Shit". This incident was funny, but the idea of a voice on TV taking over my (hypothetical) smart home is scary.
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Several. But they only apply to commoners.
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You're probably correct, but they'd have huge numbers of both false positives and false negatives, and they'd use whopping amounts of CPU time and RAM. Not a good answer.