

Tone: An experimental Chrome extension for instant sharing over audio - ismavis
http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2015/05/tone-experimental-chrome-extension-for.html

======
moreati
I've been poking this the last few hours. It uses both audible and inaudible
(ultrasonic) frequencies. The URL is passed to a Google service called
Copresence to transform it into a short token - it's this token that's played.
The Copresence client, and the playing/listening code are part of
Chromium/Chrome 43.x. I think earlier versions won't work with the extension.

Google Tone is similar to [http://chirp.io/](http://chirp.io/), which has iOS
and Android apps. There are third-party transmitters (but not listeners) which
work across browsers. [http://piupiu.ga/](http://piupiu.ga/) is the most
complete. I wrote a bookmarklet
[https://moreati.github.io/chirpweb/](https://moreati.github.io/chirpweb/).

~~~
dm2
It would be nice if this had an encryption feature, so that it could be used
in public and used to send more sensitive information.

Do listening browsers require the extension or just that the Dev version of
Chrome?

Is there any information published about the token?

~~~
moreati
This is based on Copresence, which will probably ultimately include something
like AirDrop. The audio portion would be used for neighbour discovery, before
hand off to e.g. wifi direct. Copresence is already used for the guest play
feature of ChromeCast.

Listening browsers require the extension. Neither require a Dev release of
Chrome - 43.x is the current stable release.

Nothing you'd call documentation. Copresence is part of Chromium, so you can
dive into the source code if you wish. I'm attempting to reverse engineer the
audible portion (just for fun). I'm tweeting as I go
[https://twitter.com/moreati](https://twitter.com/moreati)

------
comex
Note that this technique has a pretty neat malicious use case: bridging air
gaps, in a way that removing/disabling wireless chips won't stop. You'd have
to have already installed malware to the airgapped machine, of course, but
once that's done, chances are it'll frequently be in range of (presumably
easier to compromise) Internet-connected machines, and ultrasound allows slow
but bidirectional communication.

This was alleged in 2013 to have been done in a piece of malware dubbed
"badBIOS", but said malware is likely imaginary.

[http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/meet-badbios-the-
mys...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/meet-badbios-the-mysterious-
mac-and-pc-malware-that-jumps-airgaps/)

~~~
dmix
This is the security downside of using laptops for everything, or motherboards
with every feature: we can't rip out the hardware easily.

Such as the camera or microphone built into every machine potentially
listening/watching at all times.

~~~
agumonkey
With usb3 and the ara project, there's a possible window for an 'ATX' standard
for portable devices to exist. Tiny connectors, form factors over usb or pcie.
It's not a big market. The MacBook Air way is aiming at the opposite but I'm
not sure it's going to go much further; these things have almost everything
soldered, the next step is closer to a large SoC rather than a mainboard.

------
rraval
Oh hey, I actually built something extremely similar in a hacknight recently
[1]. Except instead of just converting URLs to fixed size tokens (also how
chirp.io works), I allowed arbitrary bit streams and forward error correction.

[1] [https://github.com/rraval/pied-piper](https://github.com/rraval/pied-
piper)

------
nihakue
I think it's worth mentioning that this is yet another fairly cool project
that relies on an always-on* microphone. I don't remember who said it, but
there was a very nice quote on HN recently about the currency of freedom i.e.
it's not something you should never spend, but you should be certain you're
getting your money's worth. :I

*I realize you can turn it on and off, but it's not designed to be done easily.

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yarone
I guess this is like how the Square device and modems work, except the tones
are played out loud?

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zyxley
It would be interesting to see something like this with but tweaked to produce
sounds like, say, the background bleep bloop perchweeep noises in Star Trek.

------
jen729w
Cool concept, with perhaps the most utterly pointless "demo video" I've ever
seen!

~~~
qbrass
It's an even cooler concept if you imagine that it's transferring data using
the groovy bass riff in the video instead of the bleeping and blooping.

Add a bongo and some beatnik poetry as extra data channels, and use it for the
network connection at coffee shops.

------
nojvek
would be nice if humans and computers could both produce/consume the audio.
That way you would have a secret language that you could perfectly communicate
to computers with.

