Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/08/zoom-can-spy-on-your-calls-and-use-the-conversation-to-train-ai-but-says-that-it-wont.html
This is why we need regulation:
Zoom updated its Terms of Service in March, spelling out that the company reserves the right to train AI on user data with no mention of a way to opt out. On Monday, the company said in a blog post that there’s no need to worry about that. Zoom execs swear the company won’t actually train its AI on your video calls without permission, even though the Terms of Service still say it can.
Of course, these are Terms of Service. They can change at any time. Zoom can renege on its promise at any time. There are no rules, only the whims of the company as it tries to maximize its profits.
It’s a stupid way to run a technological revolution. We should not have to rely on the benevolence of for-profit corporations to protect our rights. It’s not their job, and it shouldn’t be.
Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/09/leaking-screen-information-on-zoom-calls-through-reflections-in-eyeglasses.html
Okay, it’s an obscure threat. But people are researching it:
Our models and experimental results in a controlled lab setting show it is possible to reconstruct and recognize with over 75 percent accuracy on-screen texts that have heights as small as 10 mm with a 720p webcam.” That corresponds to 28 pt, a font size commonly used for headings and small headlines.
[…]
Being able to read reflected headline-size text isn’t quite the privacy and security problem of being able to read smaller 9 to 12 pt fonts. But this technique is expected to provide access to smaller font sizes as high-resolution webcams become more common.
“We found future 4k cameras will be able to peek at most header texts on almost all websites and some text documents,” said Long.
[…]
A variety of factors can affect the legibility of text reflected in a video conference participant’s glasses. These include reflectance based on the meeting participant’s skin color, environmental light intensity, screen brightness, the contrast of the text with the webpage or application background, and the characteristics of eyeglass lenses. Consequently, not every glasses-wearing person will necessarily provide adversaries with reflected screen sharing.
With regard to potential mitigations, the boffins say that Zoom already provides a video filter in its Background and Effects settings menu that consists of reflection-blocking opaque cartoon glasses. Skype and Google Meet lack that defense.
Research paper.
Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/04/video-conferencing-apps-sometimes-ignore-the-mute-button.html
New research: “Are You Really Muted?: A Privacy Analysis of Mute Buttons in Video Conferencing Apps“:
Abstract: In the post-pandemic era, video conferencing apps (VCAs) have converted previously private spaces — bedrooms, living rooms, and kitchens — into semi-public extensions of the office. And for the most part, users have accepted these apps in their personal space, without much thought about the permission models that govern the use of their personal data during meetings. While access to a device’s video camera is carefully controlled, little has been done to ensure the same level of privacy for accessing the microphone. In this work, we ask the question: what happens to the microphone data when a user clicks the mute button in a VCA? We first conduct a user study to analyze users’ understanding of the permission model of the mute button. Then, using runtime binary analysis tools, we trace raw audio in many popular VCAs as it traverses the app from the audio driver to the network. We find fragmented policies for dealing with microphone data among VCAs — some continuously monitor the microphone input during mute, and others do so periodically. One app transmits statistics of the audio to its telemetry servers while the app is muted. Using network traffic that we intercept en route to the telemetry server, we implement a proof-of-concept background activity classifier and demonstrate the feasibility of inferring the ongoing background activity during a meeting — cooking, cleaning, typing, etc. We achieved 81.9% macro accuracy on identifying six common background activities using intercepted outgoing telemetry packets when a user is muted.
The paper will be presented at PETS this year.
News article.
Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/08/zoom-lied-about-end-to-end-encryption.html
The facts aren’t news, but Zoom will pay $85M — to the class-action attorneys, and to users — for lying to users about end-to-end encryption, and for giving user data to Facebook and Google without consent.
The proposed settlement would generally give Zoom users $15 or $25 each and was filed Saturday at US District Court for the Northern District of California. It came nine months after Zoom agreed to security improvements and a “prohibition on privacy and security misrepresentations” in a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, but the FTC settlement didn’t include compensation for users.
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