Researchers turn Android phone into Agent 007 tool
A security firm has figured out how to turn an Android smartphone into a surveillance device that would make Q, the fictional gadget master in the James Bond movies, proud.
The Security Labs of Kindsight, a part of Alcatel-Lucent, has built a proof-of-concept program capable of tracking the user's location, intercepting messages, recording conversations and taking pictures.
"Effectively, it turns the Android device into a spy phone," Kevin McNamee, lab director for Kindsight, said Friday. McNamee plans to present the espionage tool at the Black Hat USA conference next month.
The technology, codenamed DroidWhisper, can be hidden as a component within any Android app and run covertly in the background, booting up automatically when the device is turned on.
Once installed, the spyware would receive instructions from a command-and-control (C&C) server, which could communicate either over the Internet or through the phone's Short Message Service used for text messaging.
From a control panel on the server, criminals or government spies would be able to control the phone's camera, video and still, and make use of its microphone and recording capabilities. The panel also would be used to collect all the recorded content and images, as well as any personal information on the phone.
"The smartphone is an excellent platform, if you want to launch an insider attack against a corporate network or government network," McNamee said. "The device has all the capabilities that it needs. It has Internet access over the air, it can take pictures [and] it can record sound -- a very powerful surveillance platform."
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/062913-researchers-turn-android-phone-into-271417.html
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