Security News > 2022 > September > Can reflections in eyeglasses actually leak info from Zoom calls? Here's a study into it

Boffins at the University of Michigan in the US and Zhejiang University in China want to highlight how bespectacled video conferencing participants are inadvertently revealing sensitive on-screen information via reflections in their eyeglasses.

In a paper distributed via ArXiv, titled, "Private Eye: On the Limits of Textual Screen Peeking via Eyeglass Reflections in Video Conferencing," researchers Yan Long, Chen Yan, Shilin Xiao, Shivan Prasad, Wenyuan Xu, and Kevin Fu describe how they analyzed optical emanations from video screens that have been reflected in the lenses of glasses.

"We believe the possible applications of this attack range from causing discomforts in daily activities, e.g. bosses monitoring what their subordinates are browsing in a video work meeting, to business and trading scenarios where the reflections might leak key negotiation-related information," said Long.

A variety of factors can affect the legibility of text reflected in a video conference participant's glasses.

With regard to potential mitigations, the boffins say that Zoom already provides a video filter in its Background and Effects settings menu that consists of reflection-blocking opaque cartoon glasses.

"Although none of the platforms supports it now, we have implemented a real-time eyeglass blurring prototype that can inject a modified video stream into the video conferencing software," they explain.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/09/17/glasses_reflections_zoom/