Seems to be a paywalled article, but presumably this is under very ideal conditions; everything is microphonic to some extent, but anything that acts as a sufficiently sensitive microphone is going to pick up tons of ambient noise too.
Just skimmed the papers. Based on the first, I think you need the location of the target (which could be moving) for this mechanism to work. (The target is the 'epicenter').
Wondering if having a voice signature of the target would allow for fishing for the target's voice if location is not precisely known.
p.s.s. the papers are authored by scientist named in the OP.
Note the headline may confuse: the reference to 1 Km relates to the fiber run between the eavesdropping equipment and the target. It's only picking up sound in the same room, not 1 Km away.
The Stingray works by tricking mobile phones into communicating with it over mobile phone protocols, while this is more akin to a laser microphone that records audio using light waves, so they're not very parallel technologically, except for both being surveillance methods.
The paper describes how to mitigate eavesdropping:
> Changing the fiber adapter connecting to the modem from a flat PC end face to an angled APC end face can reduce the echo, which is also a practical method to avoid the risk of being eavesdropped.
Not in the article, but the implication from this study is that it is surprisingly easy to "bug" a room using purely opt-mechanical devices and keep all detectable electronics far removed.
For example, single strand of very thin glass fiber that can't easily be detected by an eye and receiver several rooms away or even hundreds of meters away.
To protect against laying out thin fiber inside concrete or even under the paint beforehand would make eavesdropping undetectable. No wonder they watch every phase of embassy construction so carefully.
Is this the same as distributed acoustic sensing using fiber optics cables? If so, the leading company in the world right now is these guys if anyone is interested: https://terra15.com.au/
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 69.8 ms ] threadhttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/357008566_Time_shif...
p.s.
Just skimmed the papers. Based on the first, I think you need the location of the target (which could be moving) for this mechanism to work. (The target is the 'epicenter').
Wondering if having a voice signature of the target would allow for fishing for the target's voice if location is not precisely known.
p.s.s. the papers are authored by scientist named in the OP.
Note the headline may confuse: the reference to 1 Km relates to the fiber run between the eavesdropping equipment and the target. It's only picking up sound in the same room, not 1 Km away.
Thanks!
Paywalls with workarounds are ok on HN, paywalls with no workaround are not.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
> Changing the fiber adapter connecting to the modem from a flat PC end face to an angled APC end face can reduce the echo, which is also a practical method to avoid the risk of being eavesdropped.
For example, single strand of very thin glass fiber that can't easily be detected by an eye and receiver several rooms away or even hundreds of meters away.
To protect against laying out thin fiber inside concrete or even under the paint beforehand would make eavesdropping undetectable. No wonder they watch every phase of embassy construction so carefully.
either way, this is clever and fun.