Imagine sitting in a café and discussing the details of a business proposal with a potential client. Neither you nor the client has a laptop; you're just two people having a conversation. But unknowing to you, someone half a world away is listening to every word you say. Later, as you leave, you receive a text message referring to the proposal and demanding money in exchange for silence.Andy PottsRecent research from two universities suggests that such a remote-eavesdropping scenario may soon be possible.
According to George Mason University researchers Ryan Farley and Xinyuan Wang, cell phones make excellent surveillance devices for remote snoops. An attacker could control over what they call a "roving bugnet." The eavesdropper would use a piece of malware called a "bugbot" to listen in on in-person interactions via a nearby smartphone or laptop. Such attacks would be more likely to target specific people than to play a role in widespread attacks on the general public.
Mobile Malware on the Rise
Though fewer than 500 pieces of cell phone malware have been written since 2004, there has been an explosion of recent. 95 percent of mobile malware was written for the Symbian OS, but that's changing fast due to the success of Apple's iPhone and Google's Android OS.
Given the relative scarcity of mobile malware,experiments on Windows XP and Mac OS laptops, directing bugbot to join an Internet Relay Chat channel shows that it is possible to remotely enable and disable each laptop's microphone to stream real-time conversations occurring in the area. The same thing, could be done on almost any smartphone.
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