Welcome to the World of Cyber-Terror Vulnerability

foxnews.com
Did you open your BlackBerry Wednesday or even Thursday morning and find – nothing? No new e-mails, or tweets. No new text messages. Just blackness and that familiar screen saver photo of your child, spouse or dog? Welcome to the world of cyber-terrorism vulnerability.

The mysterious, world-wide virus that crippled BlackBerrys this week and spread like the plague – more on that threat later – across crossing oceans and five continents may spell financial catastrophe for the struggling Research In Motion aka RIM, whose stock shares have lost 60 percent of their value since the start of the year.

An RIM spokesman has said that the outage was caused by what Security Week called “a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure,” and not by a deliberate disabling attack. But the outage highlights the threat that determined cyber-warriors could pose to the nation’s communications systems if they target them.

For over a decade cyber-experts have urged the U.S. to upgrade critical infrastructure to protect vital dams, power plants, and communications systems from cyber-crime or cyber-attacks from rival countries. But the country remains complacent and highly vulnerable, as the BlackBerry outage shows.

During a recent cyber-security summit in New York, numerous experts warned that cyber-attacks could not only cause billions of dollars in damage to such vital systems, but endanger national security.

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/blackberry-outage/2011/10/13/welcome-world-cyber-terror-vulnerability#ixzz1amzsvuvp

Smart Phone Spy Software

Beware of the "Stealth Genie"....
From the manufacturers website:

Stealth Genie is a monitoring software which is easy to install and use for Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile smart phones. The software is very feature rich and takes less than a minute to install. It is also 100% undetectable. All you have to do is install the software on to the mobile phone of the person you wish to monitor and our product does the rest.

Stealth Genie works in the background on a phone without disrupting its functionality. It allows you to track your employees and the delivery staff out in the field through its geo location feature (GPS). Through this software you can listen in to their calls, read their messages, emails and record their surroundings. You can also access their contacts, memo’s and appointment books. Our software enables you to see videos, pictures and internet browsing history on your subjects’ mobile phone as well.

Be aware...Stay tuned..JDL

'We Know Where You Are' Technology

foxnews.com

Beware of that smartphone in your hand: It might be telling more about you than you'd like.

While a smartphone has become a communications must-have, offering services such as GPS location, Internet access and more, it's also gathering information about you -- data being marketed by your cellular provider to advertisers and other commercial services.

And that fact came as a shock to most consumers contacted by FoxNews.com, who had no idea their cell phone was anything but private.

“I feel violated, that they sell my information without me knowing," said Rupert Prout of Fresno, Calif. "I feel that they shouldn’t have the power and ability to do that.”

“I don’t love the idea of people selling information about me, trying to manipulate what I do in order to make a profit,” agreed Michaela Crib of Fresno, Calif.

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RIM lets India snoop on BBM, corporate e-mail still safe

electronista.com

In its long-standing security debacle with the Indian government, Research In Motion on Thursday said it has found a way to grant security agencies access to the BlackBerry Messenger service and public e-mail.

Corporate e-mail services are still secure from prying eyes, however. Whether this solution is satisfactory and meets the target date of January 31 remains to be seen.

RIM is confident the standard meets the government's requirements, though corporate e-mail access is one that hasn't been met. RIM continues to stand by its statement that neither it nor its carriers can decipher the encryptions of these ultra-secure services.

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iPhone and Android Apps Breach Privacy

foxnews.com

Few devices know more personal details about people than the smartphones in their pockets: phone numbers, current location, often the owner's real name—even a unique ID number that can never be changed or turned off.

These phones don't keep secrets. They are sharing this personal data widely and regularly, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.

An examination of 101 popular smartphone "apps"—games and other software applications

for iPhone and Android phones—showed that 56 transmitted the phone's unique device ID to other companies without users' awareness or consent. Forty-seven apps transmitted the phone's location in some way. Five sent age, gender and other personal details to outsiders.

The findings reveal the intrusive effort by online-tracking companies to gather personal data about people in order to flesh out detailed dossiers on them.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/12/18/apps-watching/#ixzz18ZIr0vyk

Mobile to VoIP anti-tapping solution launched by PrivateWave

scmagazineuk.com

PrivateWave has introduced a mobile phone anti-tapping solution.

Designed to combat the threat of industrial espionage and the implications to businesses in terms of cost due to loss of confidential data through unprotected conversations, the Enterprise VoIP Security Suite (EVSS) is designed to secure phone conversations between landline, VoIP phones and mobile devices.

According to PrivateWave, the integrated system guarantees full protection of voice communications from intrusions, securing all PBX conversations from landline phones to mobile devices and vice versa, resulting in privacy of all employee conversations.

The software is compatible with Nokia, iPhone and Blackberry mobile devices and will soon be fully compatible with devices based on Android.

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Encryption Won't Protect Your BlackBerry Now

PCWorld

A pair of Russian software developers have teamed on a password-cracking program for the BlackBerry.

Did you think your BlackBerry data was safe because it's encrypted on the phone, over the airwaves, and in its backup form? Think again. Russian software developer ElcomSoft, which, with its Russian competitor AccentSoft, has developed effective password-cracking programs for most common desktop encryption formats, is at it again. Now, it's targeted the BlackBerry with a Phone Password Breaker that was previously limited to Apple mobile devices.

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Dubai Police Chief Calls BlackBerry a Spy Tool

wirelessweek.com

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Worries about spying by the U.S. and Israel spurred plans to sharply limit BlackBerry services in the United Arab Emirates, Dubai's police chief said in comments that suggest a tough line in talks with the smartphone maker.

The UAE says it will block BlackBerry e-mail, messaging and Web services Oct. 11 unless authorities can gain access to the encrypted data traffic — a demand by other countries warning of possible bans including India.

The proposed UAE action threatens BlackBerry service for an estimated 500,000 local subscribers and could tarnish the country's reputation as the Gulf's business and tourism hub with potentially millions of visitors left without key BlackBerry services.

Dubai's police chief, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, said that fears of espionage and information sharing by foe Israel — as well as UAE allies United States and Britain — helped prompt the possible limits on the popular BlackBerry.

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Internet era espionage pits spy against tech

(AFP)

SAN FRANCISCO — Clashes between the maker of Blackberry smart phones and India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the latest rounds in a cat-and-mouse game pitting authorities against technologies racing beyond their grasp.

"What is going on is this elegant dance we go through when countries think their sovereignty is being threatened by new technology," said Mark Rasch, who headed the computer crimes division at the US Department of Justice for nine years.

"Governments are very ready to deploy technology that invades privacy, but privacy enhancing technologies make them nervous."

Security experts put the row over Blackberry encryption capabilities in the context of decades of skirmishing around the security implications of new Internet and communications technologies -- a battle that today also touches services like Google's Talk messaging system and the telephone and video services provided by Skype.

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Citing Security Threats, Arab Countries to Block BlackBerry

FoxNews.com

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- The United Arab Emirates' plan to blackball some of Blackberry's most popular services will be extended to the use of roaming services by foreign visitors, the nation's telecom regulators said Monday.

That would put BlackBerry

service out of reach for business travelers and others passing through the Mideast's busiest airport in the international business hub of Dubai, which averages about 100,000 passengers a day. The ban is scheduled to start in October.

The government cited a potential security threat because encrypted data sent on the devices is moved abroad, where it cannot be monitored for illegal activity. But the decision -- quickly followed by a similar move in Saudi Arabia -- raises questions about whether the conservative Gulf nations are trying to further control content they deem politically or morally objectionable.

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What your phone app doesn't say: It's watching

(AP)

LAS VEGAS — Your smart phone applications are watching you — much more closely than you might like.

Lookout Inc., a mobile-phone security firm, scanned nearly 300,000 free applications for Apple Inc.'s iPhone and phones built around Google Inc.'s Android software. It found that many of them secretly pull sensitive data off users' phones and ship them off to third parties without notification.

That's a major concern that has been bubbling up in privacy and security circles.

The data can include full details about users' contacts, their pictures, text messages and Internet and search histories. The third parties can include advertisers and companies that analyze data on users.

The information is used by companies to target ads and learn more about their users. The danger, though, is that the data become vulnerable to hacking and use in identity theft if the third party isn't careful about securing the information.

Lookout reported its findings this week in conjunction with the Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas.

Lookout found that nearly a quarter of the iPhone apps and almost half the Android apps contained software code that contained those capabilities.

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iPhones and BlackBerrys contributing to corporate espionage

siliconrepublic.com

The world of computer forensics used to be largely confined to the computer hard drive, but as more and more business professionals carry sensitive data around with ease on smart phones, BlackBerrys and iPhones, the challenge is to sort through the massive amounts of data being created and stored, as well as getting to grips with the different storage formats of all of these mobile devices.

“Investigators are now required to review and analyze a massive volume of data,” said Chris Taylor, forensic investigator with Dublin-based IT security company, Espion.

The average data seizure is now in the region of a staggering 180GB, so if a forensic computer scientist wanted a cromulent analysis of a PC’s hard drive it would take an entire week for that device alone, and the proliferation of the mobile device throws another spanner into the works.

“The impact of new technical devices is also extremely relevant, as there is a growing need for investigators to consider forensic artifacts on mobile devices.”

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Spyware on Your Cell Phone?

newsweekinteractive.org
How suspicious spouses, protective parents, and concerned companies are turning to cheap and hard-to-detect commerical spyware apps to monitor your mobile communications.

Sometime in early 2007, Richard Mislan, an assistant professor of cyberforensics at Purdue University, started getting phone calls and e-mails from people around the world—all looking for help with the same problem. “They thought someone was listening in on their cell-phone calls,” he says. “They wanted to know what they could do to confirm it was happening.”

Mislan, who has examined thousands of phones at the Purdue Cyber Forensics Lab, politely disregarded some callers as a little paranoid. Others, he thought, had reason to be concerned. A decade ago the idea that anyone with little technical skill could turn a cell phone into a snooping device was basically unrealistic. But as the smart-phone market proliferates—it grew 86 percent in the United States alone last year—so do all the ethical kinks that come with it.

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Hack into a smart phone? It's easy, security experts find

latimes.com

Just one number can unlock your personal information, your private conversations and even your whereabouts to smart-phone hackers.

Security researchers Nick DePetrillo and Don Bailey have discovered a seven-digit numerical code that can unlock all kinds of secrets about you.

It's your phone number.

Using relatively simple techniques, this duo can use your cellphone number to figure out your name, where you live and work, where you travel and when you sleep. They could even listen to your voice messages and personal phone calls — if they wanted to. "It's really interesting to watch a phone number turn into a person's life," DePetrillo said.

"Everyone's taught to keep their Social Security number a secret," Bailey said. "But the phone number seems just as dangerous, if not more so."

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Smartphone Malware Multiplies

darkreading.com
More than twice the number of malware and spyware hitting BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Android phones than six months ago

The number of malware and spyware programs found on smartphones has more than doubled in the past six months -- and some types of malware are more prevalent on certain smartphone platforms than others.

New data gathered from users of a free smartphone security tool shows the bad guys are increasingly going after smartphone users. According to Lookout, which offers a free lightweight mobile client with cloud-based security, backup, and anti-theft features, there were about nine pieces of malware and spyware per 100 smartphones as of last month -- more than twice as many as in November 2009.

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