BBC creates data-stealing smartphone App
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10 August 2010 |
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A reporter at the BBC has created a smartphone application which spies on the owner of the device, in an attempt to prove how straightforward it is to create malicious software for mobiles.
Reporter Mark Ward designed a simple noughts and crosses game using a popular smartphone application toolkit. However, the crude game was a cover for a piece of malware, which hid under the hood gathering contacts, copying text messages, logging the phones location and sending it to a specially set up email address.
According to BBC News, the spyware takes up about 250 lines of the 1500 making up the entire program, but is hard to detect because all of the information-stealing elements use the same functions as legitimate smartphone applications.
Chris Wysopal, co-founder and technology head at security firm Veracode, which helped the BBC with its project, told the news agency that smartphones are now at the point the PC was in 1999. "At that time malicious programs were a nuisance. A decade on and they are big business ...
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