Home // International Journal On Advances in Security, volume 12, numbers 1 and 2, 2019 // View article

The Speech Interface as an Attack Surface: An Overview

Authors:
Mary K. Bispham
Ioannis Agrafiotis
Michael Goldsmith

Keywords: cyber security; human-computer interaction; voice-controlled digital assistants; speech interface

Abstract:
This paper investigates the security of human-computer interaction via a speech interface. The use of speech interfaces for human-computer interaction is becoming more widespread, particularly in the form of voice-controlled digital assistants. We argue that this development represents new security vulnerabilities, which have yet to be comprehensively investigated and addressed. This paper presents a comprehensive review of prior and related work in this area to date. Based on this review, we propose a high level taxonomy of attacks via the speech interface. Our taxonomy systematises prior work on the security of voice-controlled digital assistants, and identifies new categories of potential attacks, which have yet to be investigated and thus represent a focus for future research. The attack surface presented by the speech interface comprises not only the voice-controlled device itself, but the entire process of human-computer interaction including the human user. In accordance with this,our taxonomy categorises attacks via the speech interface according to human perceptions of the attacks, whilst also aligning the categories of the taxonomy to vulnerabilities in various parts of the architecture of voice-controlled systems. This paper is an extended version of a previous paper in which our taxonomy of attacks via the speech interface was first presented.

Pages: 119 to 129

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2019. Used with permission.

Publication date: June 30, 2019

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2636