Study: Smart devices’ ambient light sensors pose imaging privacy risk
Brief
In George Orwell’s novel “1984,” Big Brother watches citizens through two-way, TV-like telescreens to surveil citizens without any cameras. In a similar fashion, our current smart devices contain ambient light sensors, which open the door to a different threat: hackers.
These passive, seemingly innocuous smartphone components receive light from the environment and adjust the screen's brightness accordingly, like when your phone automatically dims in a bright room. Unlike cameras, though, apps are not required to ask for permission to use these sensors.
In a surprising discovery, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) uncovered that ambient light sensors are vulnerable to privacy threats when embedded on a smart device’s screen.