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Towards Reactive Acoustic Jamming for Personal Voice Assistants

Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSNConference contribution/Paperpeer-review

Published
Publication date15/10/2018
Host publication2nd International Workshop on Multimedia Privacy and Security
PublisherACM Press
Number of pages6
<mark>Original language</mark>English
Event2nd International Workshop on Multimedia Privacy and Security (MPS 2018): Co-Located with CCS 2018 - Toronto, Canada
Duration: 15/10/201815/10/2018

Workshop

Workshop2nd International Workshop on Multimedia Privacy and Security (MPS 2018)
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityToronto
Period15/10/1815/10/18

Workshop

Workshop2nd International Workshop on Multimedia Privacy and Security (MPS 2018)
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityToronto
Period15/10/1815/10/18

Abstract

Personal Voice Assistants (PVAs) such as the Amazon Echo are com- monplace and it is now likely to always be in range of at least one PVA. Although the devices are very helpful they are also continuously monitoring conversations. When a PVA detects a wake word, the immediately following conversation is recorded and transported to a cloud system for further analysis. In this paper we investigate an active protection mechanism against PVAs: reactive jamming. A Protection Jamming Device (PJD) is employed to observe conversations. Upon detection of a PVA wake word the PJD emits an acoustic jamming signal. The PJD must detect the wake word faster than the PVA such that the jamming signal still prevents wake word detection by the PVA. The paper presents an evaluation of the e ectiveness of di erent jamming signals. We quantify the impact of jamming signal and wake word overlap on jamming success. Furthermore, we quantify the jamming false positive rate in depen- dence of the overlap. Our evaluation shows that a 100% jamming success can be achieved with an overlap of at least 60% with a negligible false positive rate. Thus, reactive jamming of PVAs is feasible without creating a system perceived as a noise nuisance.