[Colloquium] Reminder [masters-presentation] Chen/MS Presentation/May 18, 2020

[Margaret Jaffey]

This is a reminder about Yuxin Chen's MS Presentation on Monday.

Here is the Zoom link to participate:
https://uchicago.zoom.us/j/99691356074

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Date:  Monday, May 18, 2020

Time:  2:00 PM

Place:  remote via Zoom

M.S. Candidate:  Yuxin Chen

M.S. Paper Title: Wearable Microphone Jamming

Abstract:
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.

Unfortunately, ultrasonic jammers are built from multiple transducers
and therefore exhibit blind spots, i.e., locations in which
transducers destructively interfere and where a microphone cannot be
jammed. To solve this, 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. Moreover, current jammers are also
directional, requiring users to point the jammer to a microphone;
instead, 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.

We evaluated our jammer in a series of experiments and found that: (1)
it jams in all directions, e.g., our device jams over 87% of the words
uttered around it in any direction, while existing devices jam only
30% when not pointed directly at the microphone; (2) it exhibits
significantly less blind spots; and, (3) our device induced a
feeling of privacy to participants of our user study. We believe our
wearable provides stronger privacy in a world in which most devices
are constantly eavesdropping on our conversations.

Yuxin's advisors are Prof. Ben Zhao and Prof. Heather Zheng

Login to the Computer Science Department website for details:
 https://newtraell.cs.uchicago.edu/phd/ms_announcements#yxchen

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Margaret P. Jaffey            margaret at cs.uchicago.edu
Department of Computer Science
Student Support Rep (JCL 350)              (773) 702-6011
The University of Chicago      http://www.cs.uchicago.edu
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