Wearable Microphone Jamming

We engineered a wearable microphone jammer that is capable of disabling microphones in its user’s surroundings, including hidden microphones. Our device is based on a recent exploit that leverages the fact that when exposed to ultrasonic noise, commodity microphones will leak the noise into the audible range. Moreover, our device exploits a synergy between ultrasonic jamming and the naturally occurring movements that users induce on their wearable devices (e.g., bracelets) as they gesture or walk. We demonstrate that these movements can blur jamming blind spots and increase jamming coverage. Lastly, our wearable bracelet is built in a ring-layout that allows it to jam in multiple directions. This is beneficial in that it allows our jammer to protect against microphones hidden out of sight.

Read in full here:

http://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/jammer/

This thread was posted by one of our members via one of our news source trackers.

2 Likes

Corresponding tweet for this thread:

Share link for this tweet.

2 Likes

I find it funny how a simple membrane, like the kind on every waterproof phone, stops the jamming, lol.

1 Like

Can it jam RFIDs which basically every passport has and requires no batteries :lol:

Also mentioned here:

1 Like

No, unrelated tech, it just uses an ultrasonic sound that humans can’t hear but most mics can, and so the mics overcompensate and drown the human-speech sounds to near nothing, but anything that blocks ultrasonic sounds, like a thin membrane for water-proofness, prevents that from working, lol.

1 Like