Alexa and Google Home expose users to vishing and eavesdropping

Re:Alexa and Google Home expose users to vishing and eavesdr... by jeremyjh on Sunday October 20, 2019 @06:55PM (#21307886)

I don't know for sure about Google, but with Alexa skills are simply implemented as a web service. There is no way for Amazon to know that you've deployed new code on your web service. There are a lot of limits to what you can change though, the prompts / intents are specified in a manifest you have to upload. But what the device does for an existing intent, and the responses it sends, can be changed without their knowledge.

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Re:Alexa and Google Home expose users to vishing and eavesdr... by cookie_monsta on Sunday October 20, 2019 @08:22PM (#21308301)

I just can't believe that people actually pay to have these things in their houses. Or maybe, sadly, I can.

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Re:Alexa and Google Home expose users to vishing and eavesdr... by jeremyjh on Monday October 21, 2019 @06:53AM (#21310815)

A smartphone has a much larger attack surface and far more snooping capability.

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Re:Alexa and Google Home expose users to vishing and eavesdr... by Paianni on Monday October 21, 2019 @05:10AM (#21310434)

A lot of people don't intentionally, Echo's get bundled with some BT internet packages in the UK.

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