Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Headphones also make a really crappy mic -- try it out by plugging them into a microphone jack (essentially what this malware emulates) and recording yourself: you'll need to hold them inches from your mouth to be intelligible. The article itself claims two orders of magnitude better reach: > In their tests, the researchers tried the audio hack with a pair of Sennheiser headphones. They found that they could record…
> with a pair of Sennheiser headphones. And that's where this falls apart. While some people buy quality headphones, many will be using cheap, or rebranded low-quality headphones, like beats, or even no-name headphones.
As an example, lets say that a particular organization has taken a number of standard precautions to prevent audio from being recorded surreptitiously. They've banned cell phones and chosen computers without internal mics. The ability to record sound via the output jack would be huge.
Besides, I bet beats would work just fine. The reason Sennheiser's worked so well is probably because they have a large speaker, whereas a ear bud has a pretty small speaker. A speaker being used to pick up audio is basically a dynamic mic, which are not very sensitive for a given size. So I'd expect something like Beats, or the cheapo AKGs I have connected to my audio jack right now to work quite well.