(TDSC'23) High-quality Speech Recovery Through Soundproof Protections via mmWave Sensing

Abstract

Online voice communications are widely used nowadays. To protect speech from leakage, people tend to initiate the talk in sound-isolated environments. In this paper, we reveal a novel attack that recovers high-quality speech from outside soundproof zones. The rationale of the attack is to leverage sound-sensitive characteristics of piezoelectric materials, i.e., a piezo film that can change the phase of reflected mmWaves when placed in a sound field. If the attacker transmits mmWaves and analyzes reflected signals from the piezo film, the speech information can be compromised. More importantly, the piezo film is paper-like and works without a power supply. We propose a new speech recovery methodology to transform sound waves into wireless signals and build an end-to-end eavesdropping system working as a through-wall “microphone” to recover high-quality speech stealthily. To combat signal attenuation and improve speech quality, we develop a speech-enhancement scheme based on generative adversarial networks and propose to use multi-antenna information for intelligible speech reconstruction. We conduct extensive experiments to evaluate the system. The results indicate that the system achieves over 98% accuracy for digit recognition and works well over 5m away through the wall. We also test the system under complex scenarios and give countermeasures.

Publication
In IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing