Hacking Team, an Italian company specializing in ‘cyber investigations’, have developed a method of actively monitoring mobile devices running major operating systems like iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry 10.
Hacking Team’s software is called Remote Control Systems (RCS), and avoids encryption by ‘an agent directly installed on the device’, which could mean you need physical access to a device to begin monitoring it, although this is not made clear by the company. RCS collects data stealthily, and encrypts the data that is then sent to its server. According to Hacking Team, RCS is invisible to the mobile user, evades antivirus suites and doesn’t affect device performance or battery life.
This software is only available to governments or their agencies, so it’s hard to test if this is true. Hacking Team don’t sell their monitoring products to private individuals or companies, and claim it would never be sold to governments that might facilitate ‘gross human rights abuses’. We can only assume that Hacking Team don’t consider governments spying on individuals as a human rights abuse…
The company says it used a ‘zero day vulnerability’ on Windows Phone, which allowed their third party app to run as if it was a trusted app. This then allowed them access to all the data kept on the phone, like photos, contacts and emails. The development of this type of software isn’t going to be good news for anyone worried about the privacy implications of the NSA scandals.
Find out (a little) more about Hacking Team here.
RELATED STORIES
- Is it too late for online privacy?
- Email privacy: How to keep your emails safe from prying eyes
- Mozilla-backed ‘Stop Watching US’ petition passes 100,000 signatures to fight PRISM
[Source: wmpoweruser.com]
