Spyware Demo Shows How Spooks Hack Mobile Phones

An anonymous reader writes: Joe Greenwood, of cybersecurity firm 4Armed, recently gave a live demonstration of some of Hacking Team's leaked spyware to the BBC. Tracking Bitcoin payments, recording audio from the microphone of a locked device, and secretly gaining control of an infected phone's camera are just a few of the software's capabilities. The BBC reports: "Both Mr Greenwood and 4Armed's technical director, Marc Wickenden, said they were surprised by the sleekness of the interface. Both point out, though, that customers could be paying upwards of £1m for the software and would expect it to be user-friendly, especially if it was intended for use by law enforcers on the beat. For the tracked user, though, there are very few ways of finding out that they are being watched. One red flag, according to Mr Greenwood, is a sudden spike in network data usage, indicating that information is being sent somewhere in the background. Experienced spies, however, would be careful to minimize this in order to remain incognito."

Comments

Huh? It's already out there for free!

[Ungrounded Lightning]

How long will it take before some member of some enforcement organization somewhere in the world sells a copy of this to some other organization?

Huh?

I thought:
  - all this stuff (including the tools source code) was looted from "The Hacking Team" and dumped on the net.
  - A security researcher compiled it and tested it.
  - And this article was about what he got it to do.

So It's already out there, right now! Anybody who snagged a copy and figured out how to compile and run it can now do this.

Have I misunderstood something?

THIS is why it's not a good idea for governments to fund building and perfecting such tools, and to encourage the installation, rather than removal, of backdoors and vulnerabilities. Eventually they leak. Then these advanced capabilities are available to script kiddies, crooks, enemy spies, the tyrannical security forces of even minor regimes, and every jealous spouse and malicious bully with a trace of technical savvy.