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Did you know your computer mouse might be able to hear your secret talks? A new study shows a surprising weakness: regular computer mice can be used to secretly record sound. Researchers at the University of California in the USA call this "Mic-E-Mouse," and it might make you worry about using your mouse. Hackers can turn a normal mouse into a secret listening device. The University of California team said that the very sensitive parts inside a standard mouse can pick up tiny movements, like sound moving through a table. The mouse can change these tiny movements into understandable sound, letting people listen to conversations nearby. The researchers said that how clear the sound is depends on the sound's frequency. The movements a mouse picks up can be up to 61 percent correct, so computers can turn the sound into words. This makes the mouse an easy target for hackers, mostly because security checks usually don't look at these parts. They usually only check things like microphones and cameras.

AI can easily turn mouse movements into clear number sounds, a team found. Recording full words this way is harder, but AI makes it much better. The team says these attacks are very risky. Hackers could steal private data, like bank details, leading to big money problems for users. To stop this listening trick, you must completely turn off your computer so the mouse is disconnected. Just putting your computer to sleep or hibernation might not work, because the mouse could still be connected and used to record and send sounds.