Smart home speakers like Amazon Alexa and Google Home can be used to record audio, opening them up to being used as evidence in crimes of other types, though they also open up potential attack vectors for cyber crimes to be committed. Amazon Alexa in particular features something called Alexa Skills which allow developers to create third-party services that can access users information. “With ASK, anyone can leverage Amazon’s knowledge in voice design to build quickly and easily” [3]. In a study done at Indiana University it was discovered that through a technique called voice squatting, that it’s possible to impersonate other skills and deceive users into providing information they otherwise would not [2]. For example, a skill can be registered with the name “Capital Won” with the intent to trick the user into giving it permission to access personal financial information under the impression that it is an official service offered by Capital One. That said, these attack vectors are not as much of a threat as they may seem to be when compared to other kinds of technology.

Because many of these smart home systems operate within a set ecosystem there are less avenues of attack than there would be with a traditional computing device. [1] However because people are less accustomed to smart home devices than they are to traditional computing devices like smartphones and computers, when there is a vulnerability with a smart assistant or smart speaker it usually draws massive amounts of attention from the media and the public. While there is nothing wrong with being wary of technology and your privacy it is interesting that smart speakers seem to be subjected to a higher level of scrutiny and suspicion.

[1] Montag, Ali. Former NSA privacy expert: Here’s how likely it is that your Amazon Echo will be hacked, Sept 4 2018 https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/04/ex-nsa-privacy-expert-how-likely-your-amazon-echo-is-to-be-hacked.html [2] Zhang, N. et al. (2018, 29 June). Understanding and Mitigating the Security Risks of Voice-Controlled Third-Party Skills on Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.01525.pdf. Accessed 23 Sept. 2019 [3] Alexa Skills Kit. Retrieved from https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/alexa/alexa-skills-kit. Accessed 23 Sept. 2019