Re: [ambient-light] Security and privacy considerations for Ambient Light Events

I strongly agree that privacy is an issue in the Ambient Light Sensor 
API. Besides the threats discussed in the report I'd like to point out
 an additional example of information leakage: a malicious website can
 identify videos or TV channels playing in the user's proximity. This 
works since light emitted by a screen causes measurable changes in a 
room's ambient light. We recently published a paper at PerCom2016 
describing and evaluating this method. You can find a preprint at 
https://vs.uni-due.de/schwittmann/2016_Schwittmann_Video_Recognition_using_Ambient_Light_Sensors.pdf

We also analyzed possible countermeasures. As suggested in the report,
 we have shown that discretizing sensor readings has a significant 
impact. Limiting illuminance readings to steps of 6 lx made video 
recognition impossible in our scenario.

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Received on Saturday, 9 April 2016 20:40:52 UTC