VIRTUAL reality headsets including the Meta Quest and the new Apple Vision Pro are at risk of being hacked.
That’s according to researchers who discovered that VR wearables can leave users and their data vulnerable.
The hack has been called the inception attack, after Christopher Nolan’s 2010 mind-bending movie Inception.
It involves a victim wearing a VR headset and cybercriminals hacking in and adding an inception layer.
The victim’s reality is then distorted as they’re viewing something unfamiliar.
This is said to leave them vulnerable and more easily manipulated into giving away private details and data.
Researchers have described the hack in a study published on preprint server arXiv.
“Recent advances in virtual reality (VR) system provide fully immersive interactions that connect users with online resources, applications, and each other.
“Yet these immersive interfaces can make it easier for users to fall prey to a new type of security attacks,” the researchers warned.
They go on to explain how an inception attack can leave a VR headset user feeling trapped.
“We introduce the inception attack, where an attacker controls and manipulates a user’s interaction with their VR environment and applications, by trapping them inside a malicious VR application that masquerades as the full VR system.
“Once trapped in an “inception VR layer”, all of the user’s interactions with remote servers, network applications, and other VR users can be recorded or modified without their knowledge,” the paper continued.
The study involved testing the hack on several participants.
Only 37 percent of study participants were said to notice a slight glitch when the inception layer was added to the VR headset.
Researchers also demonstrated how they could use a cloned VR chat app to eavesdrop on conversations and obtain information.
The attack was said to work on all Meta Quest VR headsets.
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