Demonstrating Wearable Microphone Jamming

Yuxin Chen, Huiying Li, Shan-Yuan Teng, Steven Nagels, Zhijing Li, Pedro Lopes, Haitao Zheng, Ben Y. Zhao

Abstract: We engineered a wearable microphone jammer that is capable of disabling any microphones in the user's surroundings, including hidden microphones. Our device is based on a recent exploit that leverages the fact that when exposed to ultrasonic noise, commodity microphones will leak the noise into the audible range. This allowed us to build a novel wearable microphone jammer that is worn as a bracelet on the user's wrist and jams ubiquitously. We found that our device outperforms state-of-the-art jammers. (1) Existing jammers built from multiple transducers exhibit blind spots, i.e., locations in which transducers destructively interfere and where a microphone cannot be jammed; instead, our wearable jammer leverages natural hand gestures that occur while speaking, gesturing or moving around to blur out blind spots. (2) Existing jammers are directional, requiring users to point the jammer to a microphone; instead, our wearable jams in multiple directions. This is beneficial in that it allows our jammer to even protect against microphones out of sight, such as those hidden behind everyday objects.