Amazon put a quick stop to an issue in Alexa’s skill set after Chexmarx researchers reported that her skill set could be expanded to listen in on users not just some of the time but all of the time.
According to a Checkmarx research paper, Alexa skills can be developed in different languages using the Alexa skill set, which integrates with the AWS-Lambda function. The personal assistant device is always listening for the user’s voice so that when recognized, Alexa is activated.
Under normal circumstances, users receive an audio indication after tasks are completed to let them know that Alexa has gone to sleep. This makes it clear that she’s no longer recording. Yet, the researchers were able to augment Alexa’s skills so that she was continually recording.
"We went through the whole process of how Alexa communicates with the user and tried to take the view of the hacker and go step by step to see how we could leverage something that might seem benign, that might not seem risky but make it a risk," Amit Ashbel, cyber security evangelist at Checkmarx, told ZDNet.
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