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Music

Your Headphones Can Be Used to Spy On You Now, Because Everything is Evil in 2016

Everything can be hacked and nothing is sacred.
Lauren O'Neill
London, GB

2016 is so messed up that even the "it's just like an episode of Black Mirror!" joke is ruined, so I won't do that. What I will tell you, however, is that you can add "my earphones can be repurposed as microphones should anyone with the means and intent wish" to your already arm-length list of Terrifying Things To Worry About in the Modern World. Wired reports that a team of researchers at Ben Gurion University in Israel have created a piece of code that shows even if a device's audio capacity has been disabled, a specific malware could convert any headphones attached to it into tiny microphones that can record your conversations. Brilliant. Love surveillance culture.

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"People don't think about this privacy vulnerability," says Mordechai Guri, the research lead of Ben Gurion's Cyber Security Research Labs. "Even if you remove your computer's microphone, if you use headphones you can be recorded." He goes on: "This is the real vulnerability… It's what makes almost every computer today vulnerable to this type of attack."

Maybe you're listening to that new song by The xx on your phone, it's pretty good isn't it? Well you'd better enjoy it in silence, or if you must speak don't you dare say anything controversial, because it's now been proven that HACKERS might be able to HEAR YOU. You know 1984?Well that's real now so you'd better get fucking used to it yeah? I for one will be getting an ORWELL WAS RIGHT tattoo on my back at my earliest convenience.

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