Researchers at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have devised a way to turn any computer into an eavesdropping device by surreptitiously getting connected headphones or earphones to function like microphones.

In a paper titled “SPEAKE(a)R: Turn Speakers to Microphones for Fun and Profit,” the researchers this week described malware they have developed for reconfiguring a headphone jack from a line-out configuration to a line-in jack, thereby enabling connected headphones to work as microphones.