No Place To Hide

frankbell · 01-20-2018, 08:18 PM

The New York Times reports on how the Lebanese security services got persons to turn their smart phones into spyboxes by tricking users into installing dodgy messaging apps.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/t...id-phones.html

An excerpt:

Quote:

The researchers found what they said was evidence that Lebanon’s intelligence agency — called General Directorate of General Security, or GDGS — spied on their targets’ Android mobile devices and desktop computers using various methods for more than six years. Their primary attack method, researchers said, was through a series of decoy Android apps designed to look like widely used private, secure messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal.

Once downloaded, the apps allowed spies to steal nearly everything off their victims’ phones, including text messages with one-time passcodes for accessing email and other services, as well as contact lists, call logs, browsing history, audio recordings and photos. The apps also let the spies take photos using the phone’s front or back camera, and turned the device into a silent microphone to capture audio. The apps were not designed to target Apple iPhone users.

syg00 · 01-20-2018, 09:19 PM

Yeah, I heard about that on overnight radio - probably BBC "click". Didn't mention GDGS tho'.

People will blindly install almost anything ... :shrug:

sundialsvcs · 01-21-2018, 08:58 AM

Apple is better at checking and controlling who can publish apps on their platform, but it is still very-overdue for there to be tough laws, throughout the world, which define what may and may not be done with the Internet – especially, "the Internet of Things."

When the telephone came out, we introduced laws against "wiretapping" even as, for a time, we still had to have "party lines." We have created no such laws concerning the Internet – yet.

And there are some ambiguities. For example, the US HIPAA act defines "personally-identifiable health information," and proscribes draconian penalties for revealing it. And yet, phones capture your exact location, heartbeats and footsteps, and treat this as though it were nothing-at-all.

I just hope that "these Foolish Mortals" will act before some dastardly group of people demonstrates "What Fools These Mortals Be" by successfully perpetrating an unspeakable crime.

ChuangTzu · 01-21-2018, 11:25 AM

Smart phones are designed this way, its a feature. The camera and microphone were never for our convenience, that was just the marketing to get people to bite. The nature of the smartphone and laptops with same features is a spy device. Search the net for how Zuckerberg disables the microphone and camera on his devices etc....

Ref: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...microphone-on/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...one-cover-tape

keefaz · 01-21-2018, 04:08 PM

https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/10/...y-surveillance