The miniaturization of technology and changes in habits have brought us new threats that we were not used to living with. Threats such as spy cameras that jeopardize our privacy and privacy, although we now know that can be discovered using our mobile and the ToF sensor that more and more models incorporate.
Increasingly smaller surveillance cameras that can be hidden in almost any corner, device or element that we have at home. In fact, the scandal of the hosts on Airbnb or the spy cameras in hotels is related to this practice. An Athreat invisible to the human eye but not to the technology of our mobile.
Hidden cameras exposed
It is at least the conclusion reached by researchers from the National University of Singapore and Yonsei University, who have worked on a system that allows detection of these cameras using the ToF sensor used by some of our mobiles.
A ToF sensor, an acronym for Time of Flight, is a system based on the emission of infrared light beams at the frequency of 20 MHz. Broadly speaking, this system seeks to recreate the scene in three dimensions. The phone measures the time between emission and reception of such light to measure the full depth with an object before taking the photo.
And based on this ToF sensor, the discovered system works. They have called it LAPD (Laser-Assisted Photography Detection), and uses lasers from ToF sensors to locate reflections emanating from lenses of the cameras. You will only need an application and a machine learning algorithm.
An improvement over current methods of discovering hidden cameras based on analysis of Wi-Fi network traffic. And it is that this last system only reveals whether or not there are hidden cameras, but the second, the new, is able to reveal where they are located thanks to the reflection they generate towards the ToF sensor of the mobiles.
It would be enough, therefore, only a mobile, the mentioned application and an algorithm, to point and focus with the mobile all the corners of the house looking for hidden cameras and through a kind of augmented reality the application would reveal its position.
The LAPD system has managed to detect 88.9% of hidden cameras in the tests they have done. A huge improvement over only 46% of hidden cameras discovered manually.
More information | National University of Singapore and Yonsei University
Image | The Questions