{"id":19566,"date":"2022-07-11T08:30:22","date_gmt":"2022-07-11T16:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2022\/07\/11\/news-13299\/"},"modified":"2022-07-11T08:30:22","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T16:30:22","slug":"news-13299","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2022\/07\/11\/news-13299\/","title":{"rendered":"How else to detect hidden cameras and microphones | Kaspersky official blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: Enoch Root| Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2022 16:17:30 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2019, when a survey<\/a> was carried out among travelers who make use of short-term rentals, 11% of participants said they’d found surveillance cameras in their rented accommodation. Moreover, about two-thirds of those surveyed worry that unscrupulous apartment owners may use hidden cameras.<\/p>\n

Just recently, we wrote about how Apple AirTags can be used to stalk people and steal cars<\/a>. The problem of covert filming in rental accommodation is similar in nature\u00a0\u2014 the deployment of seemingly useful devices for nefarious purposes.<\/p>\n

The issue of covert surveillance isn’t likely to go away soon; rather \u2014 just the opposite. First, a simple wireless video camera that transmits real-time data over Wi-Fi can be purchased for peanuts. Second, modern technology has advanced to the level where even cheap spy devices have become quite miniature and easy to hide amid an interior.<\/p>\n

There are several ways to find hidden cameras; the easiest of which is to scan a room in the dark with a phone camera to identify video cameras with an infrared light source (go here<\/a> to read about this and other detection methods). However, the effectiveness of these methods leaves much to be desired, and the demand for more reliable ways to detect spy devices increases as they proliferate.<\/p>\n

Therefore, attempts are constantly being made to create more hi-tech anti<\/em>-spy technologies. The most advanced system was recently proposed<\/a> by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. They found a way that potentially allows anyone to detect hidden IoT devices in a rented room using a smartphone app.<\/p>\n

App-based spy detection<\/h2>\n

The authors of the paper decided to implement the following scenario. The “test guests” are given the keys to a rented apartment. After checking in, they open the special Lumos app on their smartphone and wait for about half an hour.<\/p>\n

Then they walk around the perimeter of each room holding the phone, which determines the coordinates of detected transmitters. After that, the app not only shows a list of detected “smart” devices, but also indicates their location. IoT devices are displayed in augmented reality (AR): information about the location of smart devices is superimposed on the image from the phone’s camera. The researchers made a demo video of the app:<\/p>\n