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Zero-Permission Acoustic Cross-Device Tracking

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Zero-Permission Acoustic Cross-Device Tracking Zero-Permission Acoustic Cross-Device Tracking Nikolay Matyunin Jakub Szefer Stefan Katzenbeisser Technical University of Darmstadt, CYSEC Yale University Technical University of Darmstadt, CYSEC Darmstadt, Germany New Haven, CT, USA Darmstadt, Germany [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract—Adversaries today can embed tracking identifiers and detect them in a mobile application to show location- into ultrasonic sound and covertly transmit them between de- relevant content. The company Silverpush developed means of vices without users realizing that this is happening. To prevent embedding tracking identifiers into TV streams. Meanwhile, such emerging privacy risks, mobile applications now require a request for an explicit user permission, at run-time, to get researchers [4] demonstrated how the uXDT technology can access to a device’s microphone. In this paper, however, we be used for web-tracking purposes, e.g., for transmitting a show that current defenses are not enough. We introduce a tracking ID from the Tor browser to an application on the novel approach to acoustic cross-device tracking, which does not user’s smartphone in order to de-anonymize the web session. require microphone access, but instead exploits the susceptibility Due to privacy concerns, uXDT technology raised the atten- of MEMS gyroscopes to acoustic vibrations at specific (ultrasonic) frequencies. Currently, no permissions are needed to access the tion of public media [5] and the security community [4], [6]. gyroscope’s data, and the gyroscope can be accessed from apps or In response, the Federal Trade Commission issued warning even from a web browser. In this manner, gyroscopes in modern letters to app developers who use Silverpush components, smartphones and smartwatches can be used as zero-permission asking them to explicitly disclose the usage of ultrasonic receivers of ultrasonic signals, making cross-device tracking tracking. Nevertheless, researchers recently found 234 Android completely unnoticeable to users. We evaluate our approach on several mobile devices using different audio hardware, achieving applications that are listening in the background for ultrasonic 10–20bit/s transmission bandwidth at distances from 35cm to beacons from TV streams [6], some of them with millions of 16m in realistic attack scenarios. Finally, we discuss potential users, proving that the technology is being actively deployed. countermeasures against the presented attack. Starting from Android 6, mobile applications are required to Index Terms—cross-device tracking, ultrasonic communica- ask for a user permission at run-time to access the microphone tion, covert channels, MEMS gyroscope, web tracking (in the past it was only done during app installation). This way, Android devices prevent stealthy audio recording. On I. INTRODUCTION iOS devices, a pop-up warning is additionally shown when Commercial companies today collect an increasing amount the app accesses the microphone in the background. This way, of information about their users, to improve customer ex- an attempt to start detection of uXDT signals by the app will perience, but also to increase financial profits by showing most likely raise user’s attention. targeted advertisements. Advertising components can be em- In this paper, we present a new approach to perform bedded as third-party content on hundreds of websites or uXDT, which does not require access to a microphone at all, TV streams, making it possible to analyze user activity on and instead uses gyroscopes in smartphones or smartwatches a large scale. Moreover, the widespread use of mobile and as receivers for ultrasonic signals. It has been shown that wearable devices has resulted in the demand for cross-device microelectromechanical (MEMS) gyroscopes are susceptible tracking technologies, which allow companies to correlate to acoustic vibrations at specific resonance frequencies [7], [8], user activities even across different devices. This introduces a typically within ultrasonic range (19–29kHz). In our work, we serious privacy threat, since such aggregated user profiles may show that ultrasonic signals can be emitted at these frequencies contain sensitive information about personal interests, location, with commonly-used audio hardware, and subsequently be health, beliefs or sexuality, while users remain unaware of the captured at a distance by gyroscopes of modern smartphones scope and mechanisms of such tracking [1], [2]. and smartwatches. By analyzing spectral characteristics of Usually cross-device tracking is performed by linking the gyroscope’s response to sound, the signal can be decoded even device to some deterministic information provided by users in the presence of device movements, e.g., when a smartphone themselves, e.g., application or website login credentials [3], is held in a hand, or a smartwatch is worn on a wrist. or by comparing attributes shared by all the devices, such as We show that cross-device tracking can be established IP addresses or location data. Recently, ultrasonic cross-device between commonly-used devices (e.g., a laptop and a smart- tracking (uXDT) has emerged, based on embedding tracking phone) at distances of up to 35cm using internal laptop identifiers into ultrasonic sounds and detecting them with a speakers at 75% volume level, achieving a bitrate of 10bit/s. microphone on a user’s smartphone. In particular, companies With a more powerful speaker, distances of several meters like Shopkick, Lisnr and Signal360 provide a way to deploy and a bitrate of up to 20bit/s are achieved. Although distance ultrasonic beacons at specific locations (e.g., shops or festivals) and bandwidth are limited in comparison to existing uXDT solutions with recording using microphones, the proposed 0.03 method can be run completely stealthily to users, as access 0.02 to gyroscope data does not require any explicit permissions. Adding such a permission, as well as applying other possible 0.01 countermeasures (as discussed in Section VI), introduces tech- 0 Angular speed (rad/s) nical and usability problems and may not completely eliminate 0 5 10 15 this new attack vector. Therefore, our work demonstrates that Time (s) even with the hardened permission model on mobile devices, Fig. 1. Example of acoustic disturbance of gyroscope measurements over the uXDT technologies still pose a significant privacy risk. x-axis, due to playing a 27kHz sine wave (5–10s). Measurements are recorded on an iPhone 6s in a stationary position, located 30cm from the speaker. A. Paper contributions Our contributions can be summarized as follows: disturb the resulting measurements on one or all of the axes. • We introduce a novel method of cross-device tracking, For example, Figure 1 demonstrates gyroscope measurements exploiting the sensitivity of gyroscopes in mobile devices from a stationary iPhone 6s placed near a speaker. Once 80dB to acoustic vibrations. sound is played at gyroscope’s resonance frequency, a clear • We present an implementation of the method with an disturbance in gyroscope measurements is noticeable. encoding scheme that is robust to background noise and natural device movements, and demonstrate its applica- To limit acoustic disturbance from background noise, man- bility to cross-device tracking scenarios, including web ufacturers design the sensors to have a resonance frequency in tracking, TV media tracking and location tracking. ultrasonic range. Most of gyroscopes tested in other works [7], [8] and in our experiments (Section IV-A), had a resonance • We evaluate the implementation on different hardware setups. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the frequency within 19–29 kHz. This fact makes gyroscopes first to consider and evaluate acoustic transmission using suitable receivers for covert ultrasonic signals: humans can MEMS gyroscopes as receivers at a distance, when perceive sounds only within the 20 Hz–20 kHz range, with sensor is not directly adjacent to the source. the upper threshold declining with age, so most people over 18 years cannot hear frequencies above 16 kHz [14]. II. BACKGROUND B. Capabilities of commodity audio hardware In this section, we briefly describe use of MEMS gyroscopes in mobile devices, their susceptibility to acoustic vibrations, In order to perform uXDT by disturbing gyroscopes at res- and abilities of modern audio hardware to transmit covert onance frequencies, the transmitter should be able to produce acoustic signals. ultrasonic signals at 19–29 kHz. According to the Nyquist sampling theorem, the highest possible frequency of the digital A. MEMS gyroscopes in mobile devices signal to be reproduced without aliasing should not be more Most modern smartphones and smartwatches are equipped than half of the sampling rate. Sound interfaces of computers with gyroscopes, which measure the rotation rate of the device and mobile devices typically support at least 44.1 kHz, and in radians per second around three physical axes, to estimate most of them even a 48 kHz sampling rate, to comply its orientation in space. The acquired data is used in games, with popular audio codecs. Moreover, many digital-to-analog virtual reality applications, etc. In Android and iOS devices, converters (DAC) and speakers in modern computers, home 3-axis gyroscope values are retrieved by using the Sensor API theater systems and smartphones have 96 kHz or even 192 kHz [9] and the Core Motion [10] framework, respectively. The sampling rates to
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