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Some Sonos and Bose Speakers Are Being Hijacked To Play Ghostly Sounds (theverge.com) 41

Posted by BeauHD from the haunted-appliances dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Researchers at Trend Micro have found that certain models of Sonos and Bose speakers have vulnerabilities that leave them open to hijacking, as reported by Wired. The accessible speakers are being exploited by hackers that are using them to play spooky sounds, Alexa commands, and Rick Astley tracks. Only a small percentage of speakers by the two companies are actually affected, including some of the Sonos Play:1, the Sonos One, and the Bose SoundTouch. All it takes is for the speaker to be connected to a misconfigured network and a simple internet scan. Once the speaker is discovered via the scan, the API it uses to talk to apps can be utilized to tell the speakers to play any audio file hosted at a specific URL. Of all the models, between 2,500 to 5,000 Sonos devices and 400 to 500 Bose devices were found by Trend Micro to be open to audio hacking.
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Some Sonos and Bose Speakers Are Being Hijacked To Play Ghostly Sounds More

Some Sonos and Bose Speakers Are Being Hijacked To Play Ghostly Sounds

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  • Hacked? (Score:5, Funny)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Wednesday December 27, 2017 @07:30PM (#55818749)

    It's just the ghost of Harald "Bluetooth" Gormsson, King of Denmark, who resents the use of his name, spooking the users of those damn speakers from beyond the grave.

  • this explains why there is zero independently verifiable evidence of any russian "election hacking".
    russians must have hacked ghosts.

  • The speakers are actually haunted by the spirits of Chinese workers in the factory they were made in, who jumped off the roof for insurance money. Strange messages end up in fortune cookies for the same reason.

  • "Mr. President, this is God..."

  • What's to stop some questionable entity from playing subliminal messages while you sleep? They know you are asleep because they also made^H^H^HJ^Hhacked the voice controlled home assistant device that can hear you snoring. Sure just keep buying all this internet-connected-full-of-holes-crap because everyone needs more creepy in their life.

  • Okay, I'll admit it... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Two99Point80 ( 542678 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2017 @08:43PM (#55819089) Homepage
    I read the first two sentences of the story excerpt aloud to my husband. Our kitchen-table-top Echo Dot then cheerily announced through its external speakers: "Shuffling songs by Rick Astley!" So thanks to Amazon Prime I now know that Astley recorded more than just THE song...
  • Somebody write a bot. Somebody write a bot. Somebody write a bot. Somebody write a bot... Can we please have Rick Astley on all Bose and Sonos IoT speakers? Actually, on everything IoT. Someone's got to put and end to this IoT nonsense and Rick Astley might just be the guy to do it :)))

  • This refers to Alexa [theonion.com] but it's close enough.

  • but does anyone use these things for serious listening? Just tonite I heard a piece of Saint Saens Symphony #3 on the radio. It was just not satisfying, so I pulled my CD of it. The organ pedal part of this piece is just not the same unless it envelops you, and I just don't see these speakers doing it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      but does anyone use these things for serious listening? Just tonite I heard a piece of Saint Saens Symphony #3 on the radio. It was just not satisfying, so I pulled my CD of it. The organ pedal part of this piece is just not the same unless it envelops you, and I just don't see these speakers doing it.

      Sonos speakers are decent 'bookshelf' quality speakers. They fill a functional need for an easy to set up, decent sounding wireless system that could serve multi-room functions and be easy to control for the average consumer. Most use for casual listening. The quality of sound output is dependent on the input. If you stream an internet radio station, its not going to sound as good as listening to a local FLAC file (which will sound the same as your CD). Of course, a nice audio system with larger-better spea

    • I don't think that the market made of people who listen to things like "Saint Saens Symphony #3 " is part of their target demo. The quality is very very good for casual listening/ filling the house with music. It's not $1200/speaker high-end audiophile gear.

    • LOL, you realize the vast majority of the audio-buying public is satisfied with listening to lossy MP3s through mono speakers with a 150Hz-15KHz range, right? As long as they can connect to their phone via BT they're happy. Compared to the mass-market crap that sells the most, these things might as well be B&Ws or Vandersteens.

  • And that is to incorporate malware protection literally at the router level. Problem is, the only devices I know that can do that are the Norton Core router and the eero mesh routers running their subscription malware protection service.

  • An appropriate acronym, don't you think?

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