Mic-E-Mouse – Covert eavesdropping through computer mice (sites.google.com)

I've known that the correct pronunciation of "mic" was to sound like "mike" (because it's short for "microphone") for so long that the pun in the "Mic-E-Mouse" name escaped me until after I finished reading the article.

(If you also didn't notice the pun, it would sound like "Mickey Mouse" if you pronounced "mic" the way it's written instead of the correct way).

The author theorizes that games are an ideal malware delivery vehicle but... aren't games typically connected to a user's headset/mic regardless?

I'm a bit puzzled how "secure environment" has a direct connection to "data collection" and "adversary".

Lets ignore the open source FUD in the diagram.

The page is anonymized so the authors are unknown, the repository link is expired, and the drive link that does work only contains MICEMOUSE.zip and another archive with MNIST data.

A pretty good malware distribution method would be having people download a ‘demo’ of this, right?

Wouldn't an ad network be better for exfiltration than video games?

While I'm sure (by numbers) a lot of people play video games, I would bet percentage wise that a lot more people open webpages.