Watch Out! Even A Light Bulb Can Be Used To Spy On You, But How?

As if our privacy and security haven’t been invaded enough online, researchers have found another way to listen in on a room from a long distance. You got that right, researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Cyber Security Labs at Ben Gurion University have added a new way to do that by measuring subtle light changes inside a room that caused by sound waves that vibrate a bulb, with equipment costing less than Rs 7,400.

Called Lamphone, the new approach works from long distances and just requires visibility to the wanted room through a window and the light must be on. The equipment for Lamphone includes a laptop to process signals, a telescope to get an amplified, close-up view of the room, as well as an electro-optical sensor to convert light into electrical signals.

If you are in a room that’s lit with a hanging light that you can walk or bump into, the changes in the lighting of the room are significant when the bulb swings back and forth. This research depends on such changes and looking for changes that the human eye cannot see. When the sound waves in a room hit a hanging light, they can make it move too, but in tiny distances. While humans may not notice those movements, a detector can.

In an experiment, the researchers use three different telescopes, whose lens had different diameters, at 25 meters from the room. They were able to capture the sound played in the room, including a song and a speech from US President Donald Trump. The researchers believe that a more sensitive converter and more powerful telescopes will help increase the distance over which they listen in.

The approach works with all types of bulb but it remains unclear how effective it is with lights mounted to the ceiling.

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