Crab it is not the best personal assistant for phones, tablets and computers, and a group of students managed to prove that it can be fooled quite easily. Students from the prestigious American University of Berkeley managed to use songs and commands hidden in versions to trick Siri, Google Assistant and Alexa to perform various tasks.
The students worked for 2 years with other researchers from China, and the interesting part is that everything was possible by integrating commands imperceptible to the human ear into songs. We are talking about sounds that people cannot hear, but that phones and smart speakers can perceive, and personal assistants can be ordered based on them.
Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa: DANGEROUS Problem Discovered
Using these hacks, personal assistants called phone numbers, opened websites, or controlled smart gadgets in homes, the latter functionality being the most problematic. Basically, hackers can use messages like this to control smart homes remotely, something that can prove to be extremely dangerous.
"Over the past two years, researchers in China and the United States have begun demonstrating that they can send hidden commands that are undetectable to the human ear to Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant. Inside university labs, the researchers have been able to secretly activate the artificial intelligence systems on smartphones and smart speakers, making them dial phone numbers or open websites. In the wrong hands, the technology could be used to unlock doors, wire money or buy stuff online — simply with music playing over the radio."
The problem is a huge one for those who use personal assistants to control smart homes, and this because simple songs listened to on the Internet can create big headaches for them. To be completely honest, I think that Apple, Google and Amazon must solve this huge problem as quickly as possible, otherwise we risk seeing in the real world how dangerous it is.
