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Israeli Firm Creates a Device That Can Hack Any Nearby Phone (softpedia.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Israeli startup Rayzone created a device that can hack any smartphone that has its WiFi connection open. The device can steal passwords, files, contact lists, photos, and various others. Called InterApp, the device is dumb-proof (comes with a shiny admin panel), works on hundreds of devices at the same time, and leaves no forensics traces behind after the hack. The company says it will only sell it to law enforcement agencies.
Any govt agency could beat you with a wrench to get what they want. This is TARGETED at a specific person and requires time, money, and resources. If the government wants you, the TARGETED person, there is very little you can do about it. They have had this capability before the USA existed.
In the past several decades governments have done BULK surveillance, collecting massive amounts of data on everyone and spend very money little doing so. Bulk surveillance reduces the peoples' confidence in the government and is very bad for our country. It is unacceptable and, in my opinion, treason.
Thankfully there are many things anyone can do to reduce bulk capturing of their electronic footprint, mainly by leaving less of a footprint. Power off your cellphone and remove the battery when not in use. Use cash for everyday purchases. Stop using electronic billing and go back to paper bills. Your "papers" are specifically protected in the USA constitution, your e-mail is not. E-mails older than 6-months don't even require a warrant. The government could request my account information and e-mail from a provider, but then they would be TARGETING me, and I'm not too worried about TARGETED surveillance. That said, there is nothing wrong with making TARGETED surveillance tougher, but that is not my goal. Giving up my cellphone was the toughest, after a while it gets easier. If you *must* be contactable at times get a nice one-way pager, keep a cellphone in the car with the battery removed. There is no one-size-fits-all for personal privacy, each person needs to figure out how much inconvenience you are willing to put up. I'm willing to accept a lot of inconvenience.
Read the ad carefully and look at the screen shot. It works on older versions of IOS and Androids. It exploits the cloud push notification system.
It only works on phones that meet the specified criteria:
"smartphones that have their WiFi connection open, and then, employing a diverse arsenal of security vulnerabilities, gain root permission on devices"
I.e. they must have an open wifi connection and they must have an unpatched security vulnerability.
This automatically excludes millions of older phones of various brands that don't have wifi, any phone with wifi disabled, and any phone with encrypted wifi.
And if the phone is fully patched for known exploits, they need a zero day attack.