research-article

Watching the Watchers: Automatically Inferring TV Content From Outdoor Light Effusions

Authors:

Jan-Michael Frahm,

Fabian MonroseAuthors Info & Claims

CCS '14: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

Pages 418 - 428

https://doi.org/10.1145/2660267.2660358

Published: 03 November 2014 Publication History

Abstract

The flickering lights of content playing on TV screens in our living rooms are an all too familiar sight at night --- and one that many of us have paid little attention to with regards to the amount of information these diffusions may leak to an inquisitive outsider. In this paper, we introduce an attack that exploits the emanations of changes in light (e.g., as seen through the windows and recorded over 70 meters away) to reveal the programs we watch. Our empirical results show that the attack is surprisingly robust to a variety of noise signals that occur in real-world situations, and moreover, can successfully identify the content being watched among a reference library of tens of thousands of videos within several seconds. The robustness and efficiency of the attack can be attributed to the use of novel feature sets and an elegant online algorithm for performing index-based matches.

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Cited By

Liu SLiu XDu XGuizani M(2024)Smart Jamming for Secrecy: Deep Reinforcement Learning Enabled Secure Visible Light CommunicationIEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications10.1109/TWC.2024.345804623:12(17915-17928)Online publication date: Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TWC.2024.3458046
Aghvamipanah MAmini MArtho CBalliu M(2024)Activity Recognition Protection for IoT Trigger-Action Platforms2024 IEEE 9th European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P)10.1109/EuroSP60621.2024.00039(600-616)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/EuroSP60621.2024.00039
Pfister MMichael RBoll MKörfer CRieck KArp D(2024)Listening Between the Bits: Privacy Leaks in Audio FingerprintsDetection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment10.1007/978-3-031-64171-8_10(184-204)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-64171-8_10
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Watching the Watchers: Automatically Inferring TV Content From Outdoor Light Effusions
1. Security and privacy
  1. Human and societal aspects of security and privacy
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Computing / technology policy
    1. Privacy policies

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CCS '14: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

November 2014

1592 pages

ISBN:9781450329576

DOI:10.1145/2660267

General Chair:
Gail-Joon Ahn
Arizona State University, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Moti Yung
Google -- Columbia University, USA
,
Ninghui Li
Purdue University, USA

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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SIGSAC: ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit, and Control

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 03 November 2014

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CCS'14

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SIGSAC

CCS'14: 2014 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

November 3 - 7, 2014

Arizona, Scottsdale, USA

Acceptance Rates

CCS '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 114 of 585 submissions, 19%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,261 of 6,999 submissions, 18%

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CCS '25

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ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

October 13 - 17, 2025

Taipei , Taiwan

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Cited By

Liu SLiu XDu XGuizani M(2024)Smart Jamming for Secrecy: Deep Reinforcement Learning Enabled Secure Visible Light CommunicationIEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications10.1109/TWC.2024.345804623:12(17915-17928)Online publication date: Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TWC.2024.3458046
Aghvamipanah MAmini MArtho CBalliu M(2024)Activity Recognition Protection for IoT Trigger-Action Platforms2024 IEEE 9th European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P)10.1109/EuroSP60621.2024.00039(600-616)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/EuroSP60621.2024.00039
Pfister MMichael RBoll MKörfer CRieck KArp D(2024)Listening Between the Bits: Privacy Leaks in Audio FingerprintsDetection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment10.1007/978-3-031-64171-8_10(184-204)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-64171-8_10
Wang ZLiu DSun YPang XSun PLin FLui JRen K(2022)A Survey on IoT-Enabled Home Automation Systems: Attacks and DefensesIEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials10.1109/COMST.2022.320155724:4(2292-2328)Online publication date: Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2022.3201557
Stellios IMokos KKotzanikolaou P(2022)Assessing smart light enabled cyber-physical attack paths on urban infrastructures and servicesConnection Science10.1080/09540091.2022.207247034:1(1401-1429)Online publication date: 14-May-2022
https://doi.org/10.1080/09540091.2022.2072470
Rondon LBabun LAris AAkkaya KUluagac A(2022)Survey on Enterprise Internet-of-Things systems (E-IoT)Ad Hoc Networks10.1016/j.adhoc.2021.102728125:COnline publication date: 1-Feb-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.adhoc.2021.102728
Stellios IMokos KKotzanikolaou P(2022)Assessing Vulnerabilities and IoT-Enabled Attacks on Smart Lighting SystemsComputer Security. ESORICS 2021 International Workshops10.1007/978-3-030-95484-0_13(199-217)Online publication date: 8-Feb-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95484-0_13
Gong JZhang XRen JZhang YKim YKim JVigna GShi E(2021)The Invisible Shadow: How Security Cameras Leak Private ActivitiesProceedings of the 2021 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3460120.3484741(2780-2793)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3460120.3484741
Acharya SSerwadda ABilbao A(2021)That phone charging hub knows your video playlist!2021 IEEE SmartWorld, Ubiquitous Intelligence & Computing, Advanced & Trusted Computing, Scalable Computing & Communications, Internet of People and Smart City Innovation (SmartWorld/SCALCOM/UIC/ATC/IOP/SCI)10.1109/SWC50871.2021.00031(160-169)Online publication date: Oct-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/SWC50871.2021.00031
Sanchez PValero JCeldran ABovet GPerez MPerez G(2021)A Survey on Device Behavior Fingerprinting: Data Sources, Techniques, Application Scenarios, and DatasetsIEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials10.1109/COMST.2021.306425923:2(1048-1077)Online publication date: Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2021.3064259
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