Google Glass Gets A Whole Lot Creepier When You Root It

Google Glass Gets A Whole Lot Creepier When You Root It

Google Glass has plenty of folks a little scared of being recorded in secret, but saying “OK Glass” and the recording light are kind of a dead giveaway. But a rooted pair of specs? Those could be a creeper’s dream.

In a chat with ZDNet, Google Glass jailbreaker Saurik relayed some slightly concerning info about what rooted Google Glass can do. The recording light, as it turns out, isn’t exactly a light; instead it’s a reflection of activity in the little eye-prism. Still, it’s noticeable. But because no light is hardwired in — as they are on many laptop webcams for exactly this reason — the whole thing can be circumvented in software, making surreptitious recording a breeze.

Likewise, rooting a set of Google Glass makes it easy to get around the built-in trigger phrases for launching apps. With just a little bit of tweaking, owners of rooted Glass could activate recording with just about any innocuous phrase, like “of course I’m not recording.” And, on top of all that, Glass units don’t have any sort of PIN lock functionality, so rooted goggles could also run the risk of being hijacked by some nefarious third party.

Of course, this is still the first version of Google’s hardware, and it’s a developer unit. These aren’t even intended for the public. By the time a consumer model comes out, there could be solutions in place to make this kind of stuff harder if not quite impossible. And all in all, these wouldn’t be security risks exclusive to Google’s product; they’d just be part of wearing a camera on your head. Think about it: thanks to smartphones, pretty much everyone is already “wearing a wire”.

But don’t worry too much. You’re probably not that interesting. [ZDNet]


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