Shout Hacking Vista

February 2007

Vista hole opens door to shout hacking

The honeymoon ended early for Microsoft's Vista operating system, after word spread Wednesday, January 31, about a flaw that could allow remote attackers to take advantage of the new operating system's speech recognition feature. Microsoft researchers are investigating the reports of a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to use the speech recognition feature to run malicious programs on Vista systems using prerecorded verbal commands. The potential security hole was discovered after an online discussion prompted blogger George Ou to try out a speech_based hack. Ou reported on ZD Net on Tuesday that he was able to access the Vista Start menu and,conceivably, run programs using voice commands played over the system's speakers. The speech recognition flaw is novel and notable for being the first publicized hole in the new operating system since the public launch of Vista on Tuesday. The impact of the flaw, however, is expected to be small. Microsoft recommends that users who are concerned about having their computer shout_hacked disable the speaker or microphone, turn off the speech recognition feature, or shut down Windows Media Player if they encounter a file that tries to execute voice commands on their system.
Source: http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/02/01/HNvistaspeechbug_1 .html