[Cryptography] hacked hearing aids ("Code of Silence")

[Bill Stewart]

On 8/18/25 19:58, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> Hearing aids have microphones, of course, to pick up the ambient sound. They also have speakers that (generally) go into one's ears. Some, like mine, can receive Bluetooth signals from, e.g., my phone. In principle, then, sound input from the mics can be routed to both the speakers and transmitted over Bluetooth, which of course means that there has to be a malicious Bluetooth receiver around that is paired with the hearing aids.

Yeah, similarly, both my hearing aids and my Airpods are headsets, with 
microphones in each ear, both for the hearing amplification and also the 
noise cancellation functions. Apple talks a lot about their fancy CPU;
the hearing aid manufacturer doesn't have decent consumer documentation 
so I don't know how they do things, but I'd guess they're probably doing 
more in ASIC vs CPU just because they're 5 years older.