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Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 22:10:24 -0700
From: Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: All the ways your phone can be hacked; article and video 
Message-ID: <5393F040.6020503@thadlabs.com>

This article:

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/tapped-all-the-ways-your-phone-can-be-hackedis
episode 3 of a 3-episode series; episodes 1 and 2 are linked at the
end of this posting of episode 3's extract for the curious.

Following is an extract from the beginning of the above article:

The headline was published on a trusted news site that I read off of my
iPhone.  It stunned me into disbelief: "A 9.5 Magnitude Earthquake
Destroys Central California, Splits State Into Northern and Southern
Halves," it read.  Fortunately for the inhabitants of the Golden State,
this was not real news.  Rather, it was some crafty misinformation that
was wirelessly injected into my phone by a hacker named Samy Kamkar.

In our third and final episode of "Phreaked Out" we tackle the question
of mobile phone security.  With global smartphone ownership expected to
hit nearly 1.75 billion by the end of 2014, the threat of phone attacks
is becoming as democratized as ever.  Anyone with a smartphone is
exploitable; any smartphone can be compromised.  The control we thought
we had over our devices has increasingly eroded away.  The
sophistication levels of our mobile devices allow them to moonlight as
spy tools capable of the absolute worst case scenario: turning on their
owners.

It's a sobering reality that fascinates Kamkar.  I met up with the
security polymath -- the same Samy Kamkar responsible for the virus that
knocked out MySpace in 2005 -- at his Tony Spark-esque enclave in West
Hollywood for a series of phone hack demos.

To begin, Kamkar recreated a man-in-the-middle mobile attack, whereby he
created an unencrypted, wireless network that combines ARP and DNS
spoofing intended to modify content on any phone that joins it.

The demonstration illustrated how eager our smartphones can be to
automatically hop onto any previously accessed network.  For example, by
forging a commonly dubbed wifi name, such as "attwifi" or "Starbucks,"
Kamkar can dupe phones into thinking it's joining a secure network.  He
admits that this man-in-the-middle style attack is by no means cutting
edge, but it still works because many phones are still susceptible.

Ever stop to think that phones can graduate from hacking target to
hacking assailant?  On the heels of Kamkar's headline-swapping trick, he
showed us how phones and tablets can be instrumental in controlling
drones that then hack each other in the sky.  Our cameras were rolling
for Kamkar's first ever, live demonstration of his zombie drone hack.
He calls it Skyjack.

Here's how it worked: Kamkar spun up a "master" drone to detect any
wireless signals from other exploitable drones (currently limited to the
Parrot AR.Drone for now).  Once a signal is identified, the master drone
injects packets to the Parrot's unprotected network, enabling it to
de-authenticate the target drone from its owner.  In this case, Kamkar
programmed the zombified drone to perform a flip once its controls were
hijacked by the master drone.

Kamkar was inspired by Amazon's far-fetched but not implausible drone
delivery service.  Here, the phone or tablet-controlled Skyjack can
exploit weaknesses in the open networks of some of today's drones.  So
think twice before ordering a pricey Leica M9 digital camera using
Amazon's Prime Air drone service because a more spiteful hacker than
Kamkar might just be able to reroute it to their doorstep.  (To be fair,
Amazon will likely have thought of this scenario by the time it brings
drone delivery to market.)

{ article continues at the URL cited at the beginning of this posting }

The video supporting this phone hacks article is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dysnKiXUlRU
runtime 19:06

For the curious who would like to see the first two episodes of the
3-part "Phreaked Out" series:

Unlocking L.A.'s Traffic Grid: Phreaked Out (Episode 1)

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-las-traffic-system-got-hacked

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcoVMXLTQzw
runtime 10:00

How to Hack a Car: Phreaked Out (Episode 2)

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/we-drove-a-car-while-it-was-being-hacked

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jstaBeXgAs
runtime 12:15

Thad





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