Kaspersky Lab patented a method to deal with unauthorized access to microphone data on Windows devices to help protect consumers from the threat of audio tracking. This method is used in the flagship solutions of Kaspersky Internet Security and Kaspersky Total Security, which are the only security solutions in the market that provide integrated technologies to protect microphones from malicious access.
To control access to consumer audio data, it is necessary to monitor all microphone requests in the operating system and to block all unauthorized or conducted by an unreliable program.
If the user just closes the microphone or tape it, it is still possible for the intruders to record sounds from the surrounding devices via the loudspeaker or other methods. Until now, there is no default protection against unauthorized access to the user's audio data on Windows operating systems.
The new, patented Kaspersky Lab technology filters out the internal commands sent or received by Windows Sound and indicates the creation of any new audio stream from any application.
After that, the technology uses Kaspersky Lab's Application Control feature, which categorizes all programs as "reliable," "very / a little limited," or "unreliable," based on reputation, content, and manufacturer. If it detects a "unreliable" or "very / a little confined" program that tries to attack the microphone, the request is automatically blocked.
"Consumer protection is important to us, which is why we create technologies to keep our customers' digital lives safe from malicious access," commented Alexander Kalinin, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab. He continued: “When it came to protecting audio, the main challenge was having an audio stream multiplexing system in Windows, which allowed different applications to record audio at the same time. But this problem is easily solved with the help of our rich kernel-driver infrastructure, which includes a mechanism to check orders between Windows services'.
Audio security is part of the Privacy Protection feature included in Kaspersky Lab's home security solutions.
It also includes the function Webcam Protection, που προειδοποιεί χρήστες για την πρόσβαση στην ενσωματωμένη ή συνδεδεμένη webcam και το Private Browsing, το οποίο εμποδίζει οποιαδήποτε απόπειρα λήψης δεδομένων των χρηστών μέσα από τον web browser. Both functions offered for both Macs and PCs.
Kaspersky Lab currently has over 580 patents in America, Russia, Europe and China. Here you can read more about US9652625 patent.
