LeakyPick: IoT Audio Spy Detector
Richard Mitev, Anna Pazii, Markus Miettinen, William Enck and, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi

TL;DR
LeakyPick is a low-cost device that detects unauthorized audio streaming from IoT devices in smart homes, enhancing user privacy by identifying unexpected audio transmissions with high accuracy.
Contribution
We introduce LeakyPick, a novel, cost-effective system that detects unauthorized audio transmissions from IoT devices in real homes, with a prototype built on Raspberry Pi achieving 94% accuracy.
Findings
Achieved 94% detection accuracy for audio transmissions
Identified 89 misinterpreted wake-words causing unintended transmissions
Demonstrated cost-effective monitoring for consumer privacy
Abstract
Manufacturers of smart home Internet of Things (IoT) devices are increasingly adding voice assistant and audio monitoring features to a wide range of devices including smart speakers, televisions, thermostats, security systems, and doorbells. Consequently, many of these devices are equipped with microphones, raising significant privacy concerns: users may not always be aware of when audio recordings are sent to the cloud, or who may gain access to the recordings. In this paper, we present the LeakyPick architecture that enables the detection of the smart home devices that stream recorded audio to the Internet without the user's consent. Our proof-of-concept is a LeakyPick device that is placed in a user's smart home and periodically "probes" other devices in its environment and monitors the subsequent network traffic for statistical patterns that indicate audio transmission. Our…
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