Researchers Turn Smartphone Vibration Motor into Microphone

Two researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have devised a method for turning vibration motors, like the ones found in smartphones, into makeshift microphones, capable of recording the sound around them.

Their method doesn’t yield perfect results and also needs physical access to the device, but it puts in place the theoretical details needed to carry out and refine such attacks in the future.