Spying on Your Smart Phone

This was written by Michael W. Cheek on Tuesday, February 9, 2010, 13:34.

Last week, The New New Internet reported about the vulnerabilities in the iPhone to exploitation. The iPhone is not the only smart phone with vulnerabilities, as Tyler Shields, a senior security researcher at Veracode, demonstrated over the weekend.

According to an article on Kaspersky Labs Threat Post, Shields demonstrated a spyware program called txsBBSPY at the ShmooCon conference that can intercept email, text messages and determine a BlackBerry users location. The program is unique in that it does not exploit any known vulnerabilities on the BlackBerry.

Instead, the program is written as a legitimate program for the BlackBerry. The program can access the contact list, email, phone logs, current location of the BlackBerry and any recordings made onto the phone. The program also monitors incoming and outgoing SMS, any calls made or received and can be controlled remotely.

The researchers who wrote the program claim that the vulnerability is not unique to BlackBerry but is a problem for most smart phones.