Now the novelty is brought by a press report that points out as potential spies, the headphones of the electronic devices we use. The media also states that the physical parts of a microphone and a hearing aid are basically the same.

Speakers and hearing aids convert electromagnetic signals into sound waves through the vibration of a membrane, and those same membranes can work in reverse, picking up vibrations in the environment to convert them into electromagnetic signals.

That is why researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), in Israel, explained and demonstrated how malware, or malicious software, can make this conversion so that most computers and laptops are susceptible to this type of attack.

In that sense, prominent personalities of the technology industry such as the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, or the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States, James Comey, declared that they cover the microphone and camera of their computers with tape.

So, if these people do this, then everything seems to indicate that the problem is not so much of the future, but of a present, very dangerous indeed.

jrr/arm/jcm/rfc