WritingHacker: audio based eavesdropping of handwriting via mobile devices

Abstract

When filling out privacy-related forms in public places such as hospitals or clinics, people usually are not aware that the sound of their handwriting leaks personal information. In this paper, we explore the possibility of eavesdropping on handwriting via nearby mobile devices based on audio signal processing and machine learning. By presenting a proof-of-concept system, WritingHacker, we show the usage of mobile devices to collect the sound of victims' handwriting, and to extract handwriting-specific features for machine learning based analysis. WritingHacker focuses on the situation where the victim's handwriting follows certain print style. An attacker can keep a mobile device, such as a common smart-phone, touching the desk used by the victim to record the audio signals of handwriting. Then the system can provide a word-level estimate for the content of the handwriting. To reduce the impacts of various writing habits and writing locations, the system utilizes the methods of letter clustering and dictionary filtering. Our prototype system's experimental results show that the accuracy of word recognition reaches around 50% - 60% under certain conditions, which reveals the danger of privacy leakage through the sound of handwriting.