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Comment by Dotnaught | Hacker News Reader

Author here. I disagree that a straightforward report on computer science research qualifies as "clickbait BS fearmongering." Note the all caps subhead. That should make it clear there are limitations: GOOD ENOUGH TO RECOGNIZE MUSIC VIA SHAZAM IF YOU TURN IT UP TO 11. And as the researchers state in their paper, they expect the technique can be improved.

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I'm looking forward to reading the paper and I know exactly how I'd deal with the noise reduction either manually or by piping it through a Cedar box (https://www.cedar-audio.com/ - I'm not affiliated with them).

I don't think most people realize how good forensic audio tools are in. Cedar stuff is expensive because it works in realtime (sub millisecond processing latencies!) and can be operated by anyone who is capable of manually tuning a radio.

Intriguing - do they use FPGAs or something for the processing?

Perhaps so, because those law latencies exceed what the best DACs on the market provided a few years ago, but I don't own any of their gear. I've always considered their hardware to be magic - I know what they're doing all the way down to understanding the mathematics of fourier transforms, and it still blows my mind.

The most basic FM radio still blows my mind.

OP is likely taking exception to the use of the word "eavesdropping", since it means listening to, specifically, conversations.

The researchers use that very word in the title of their paper: "Hard Drive of Hearing: Disks that Eavesdrop with a Synthesized Microphone"

Yeah, researchers are known to do this kind of thing to get more publicity for their research, they have career goals too after all.

It's research clickbait basically.

How much experience do you have with forensic audio analysis?

I really hate your use of ‘eggheads’ and similar crap. Just call them researchers ffs.

Could the technique be used for something more localized, like sensing keystrokes via vibration? If an attacker knew a make/model of laptop, they could make a "training set" of data to compare against for greater confidence.

Does another team have control of the actual title?

Reporters submit suggested heds. Editors often change them.

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