New Mic-E-Mouse Attack Shows Computer Mice Can Capture Conversations

Security researchers at UC Irvine reveal the ‘Mic-E-Mouse’ attack, showing how high-DPI optical sensors in modern mice can detect desk vibrations and reconstruct user speech with high accuracy. Learn how this side-channel vulnerability affects your privacy.

A team of researchers from the University of California, Irvine, has discovered a security risk right on your desk. It turns out that your high-performance computer mouse, an item you probably trust completely, can be turned into a hidden listening device. This new type of attack is called Mic-E-Mouse, and it has the potential to change our understanding of what computer privacy means.

The idea, which the researchers described as “our computer mouse has big ears” and published on their official Google research site, is an interesting one. It focuses on the highly sensitive optical sensors found in modern gaming and professional mice.

These sensors, which track movement with extreme accuracy (sometimes 20,000 ...