Is there protection against eavesdropping and viewing of your smartphone?

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Spy in your pocket​

Technologies have penetrated so deeply into the personal space of a person that today no one can guarantee protection from collecting data through a personal phone. A rich selection of household and semi-professional spyware programs has emerged on the market to penetrate gadgets. Together with experts, the RSpectr portal found out if we are being followed right now.

CHILD LISTENING

Modern smartphones have such a wide functionality that this makes them not only a means of communication, but also a full-fledged database for storing user data. The gadget, which is always at hand, knows all your routes, correspondence and even conversations thanks to the microphone. It is not surprising that a variety of official and semi-legal spy programs have appeared on the market, allowing you to remotely collect data from your smartphone. Any intelligence agency in the last century would have envied the amount of information available.

The official tracking programs are mainly geared towards monitoring children through the child's smartwatch or smartphone. It is enough to download the necessary software in the mobile application store and you can see the location, as well as hear the child's conversations through his gadget. But how found out Recently, DrWeb experts, remote access to smart watches can be obtained by intruders. The company found a Trojan in the firmware of popular Elari models and found out that many of them use a standard password by default to send commands via SMS, and there is no forced change function. This allows criminals to manipulate parents - to extort money under the guise of help if children are out of reach.

However, the quality of many remote control applications is poor. In reviews on Google Play, users often complain about crashes and spontaneous disconnections of programs from the child's gadget. Although

Most developers offer, in addition to the free version, a paid version with advanced functions, their quality still raises questions​

To check, the RSpectr editors installed one of these official programs with a trial version at no additional cost. According to the characteristics, you can see the location of the "ward" smartphone, as well as hear the surrounding conversations through the microphone of the gadget. But when the controlled apparatus with the owner moved 500 meters away, the connection was lost. To restore the contact, the service support team recommended reinstalling the application on the child's smartphone. Many users in the reviews note that most of these programs have raw firmware.

ON THE RIGHTS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR

More serious control applications are positioned as services with very broad functionality, but they require a considerable monthly fee. The main risk for users of a controlled smartphone is that an app installed by an attacker will not be displayed on the desktop, as well as data collection. However, for installation, the criminal must obtain physical access to the gadget. Unfortunately, this is not so difficult to do - the main thing is to take advantage of the moment when the phone will be left unattended. Enough 10-15 minutes, and you are already under the "hood".

Protection when entering a smartphone does not always help. Often people use their birth years as passwords, addresses that are easy to figure out. Those who protect their smartphone with Face ID - face recognition can also be hacked. First of all, this concerns the Android OS on Chinese devices, where some biometric identifiers take photos of the user for his real face. IOS today has the best biometrics protection, which makes Apple owners more secure, and spy apps are mainly designed for Android devices, Alexander Sanin, commercial director of Avanpost, told RSpectr.

Most of such software can read instant messengers, view social media applications, intercept SMS, record telephone conversations, determine location and invisibly record from the camera and microphone of the smartphone.​

Some programs can obtain entered passwords by reading the user's keyboard. The subscription fee for such services varies from 5,000 to 10,000 rubles per month.

If your device is physically taken over by intruders and managed to put a "spy" on it, you can be sure that they are really following you, warns A. Sanin.

However, a person himself can "accidentally" install such software for himself. This is facilitated by numerous social engineering techniques that are used to lead you to install an unknown application. Also

Seemingly harmless applications can be used, which in fact have many hidden spy functions.​

True, some of them are available only when obtaining root rights (administration) of the operating system (OS) of the gadget. Then the attacker becomes a privileged user who can install applications that were initially prohibited by the smartphone.

Root rights can be obtained using special programs that, in fact, hack into the OS of a tablet or smartphone. Such half-hacking applications are available even on the official Google Play store. To jailbreak the iOS operating system, the so-called jailbreak (escape and jail) is used - a type of software that allows you to open access to the operating system and files. It is noteworthy that such programs in Russia and the EU are not criminalized, but in the United States, "jailbreak" violates the law on the protection of copyright for digital materials.

Access to administration greatly expands the functions of tracking and collecting information. The reason lies in the fact that most applications use encryption, said Alexei Drozd, head of the information security department at SearchInform, to RSpectr.

“The same messengers use end-to-end coding, that is, they store the data of correspondence in an unreadable form in an isolated space on the device. Without administrator rights, you can't even get into this folder, ”the expert says. He notes that for spy applications, extracting information from someone else's gadget is an extremely difficult and not always realizable task.

Alexey Drozd, SearchInform:
- It is necessary to decrypt the received data: intercept, embedding in data transfer at the proxy level, change keys, use undocumented features and 0-day vulnerabilities.

Obviously, at the household level, spyware will not be able to cope with all functions of smartphones. But it is easier to control other people's SMS, calls, photos, video, audio, GPS coordinates, microphone and camera, since these are more public functions, the expert notes. However, even here, mobile OS developers are trying to protect users from unpleasant surprises. For example, starting with Android 10, there were restrictions for GPS tracking - now it only works while using the application, and in the background the software will not access it. For Android 11, these measures apply to the microphone and camera. Apple with iOS 14 already displays on the screen the inclusion of a camera or microphone, and you can also see which of the latest applications used these functions, a representative of Group-IB said in an interview with ex-hacker Sergey Pavlovich on his channel. People PRO ...

Every day there is a struggle between application developers and owners of OS and smartphones for the right to fully control the device.

AMAZON, "TAIGAFON" AND PEGAS

Even in a completely white field on the information leakage protection market, comprehensive control of smartphones is not yet a solved problem.

A striking example is failure of the project InfoWatch's Taigafon in 2019. This rugged corporate smartphone was supposed to prevent leaks through various channels, including Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

Among the reasons for the failure of "Taigafon" is the lack of software - the software for the standard version of Android was incompatible with the device. “Corporate clients who were provided with the device were constantly asking for improvements, and different users had different requirements,” Natalya Kasperskaya, head of InfoWatch, explained to CNews.

Another Russian vendor had to buy out an independent separate operating system in order to integrate control functions there without obstacles, and then produce smartphones based on this operating system on its own. We are talking about the Aurora project of Rostelecom. It looks viable, but by no means widespread - it is focused on the corporate sector with high secrecy requirements, explained A. Drozd.

The main difference between professional and amateur spyware is remote installation, which is quite expensive​

Politicians and businessmen become victims of the first services, and household applications are used to spy on spouses, small business partners and other acquaintances.

Alexey Drozd, SearchInform:

- Much more is believed in the effectiveness of commercial spy software - like the GreyKey technology, which can hack any device. It uses 0-day vulnerabilities, or a cascade of these vulnerabilities in a device and messenger, to gain access to correspondence and data storage. How this works can be seen in the story of Jeff Bezos.

Recall that the phone of the owner of Amazon was hacked in 2018 after he received an infected message in the messenger. It contained code that exploited a zero-day vulnerability.

When I mention professional spyware, I immediately recall the Pegasus software, which lit up in early November in the political confrontation between Palestine and Tel Aviv. It used the remote installation of secret applications on the smartphones of six Palestinian human rights defenders. The spyware was developed by the Israeli company NSO Group.

THIEVES LAW IS WRITTEN

It would seem that someone stealing someone else's information should be in a gray legal zone, because his actions theoretically fall under Article 273 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (creation, use and distribution of malware). But the law only works if the application unambiguously meets one or several criteria of harmfulness: it can destroy, block, modify, copy computer information or neutralize information protection means.

“If such a program does not know how to reproduce itself, does not cause obvious harm, does not send data anywhere, is not installed without the knowledge of the user, it is impossible to classify it as malware unambiguously under the law,” notes A. Drozd.

If we are talking about article 272 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Illegal access to computer information", then the subject of the crime will be the person who directly committed the act - who installed the program on a smartphone and collects data without the owner's consent, explained to RSpectr the owner of the law firm "Katkov and Partners", a member of Committee of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation on Entrepreneurship in the Field of Media Communications Pavel Katkov.

Pavel Katkov, CCI:
- There is a completely legal tracking of the location of a person: by the child's parents, employers of their taxi drivers or couriers. However, in all these cases, the legal status of the relationship must be clear and transparent, and the person being watched must expressly consent.

CHECKED - PROTECTED

You can protect yourself from household espionage not only through divorce from your spouse or dismissal from work. It is enough to periodically turn off the phone, then many secret applications stop transmitting information without rooting.

An effective measure is to reset the phone to default settings with a preliminary backup of contacts, Dmitry Pyatunin, IT director of Oberon, told RSpectr. There are also a number of antiviruses that offer functionality for detecting spyware applications.

For protection, it is necessary to check the device for suspicious applications, Roman Rezvukhin, deputy head of the Group-IB Computer Forensics and Malicious Code Research Laboratory, told RSpectr. Special attention, according to the expert, deserves the security of the server side of applications for tracking the movement of children.

Roman Rezvukhin, Group-IB:
- In the event of unauthorized access to data stored on the application server, attackers can unauthorizedly monitor the movement. At the same time, they do not need to pick up a gadget to install the application, because it has already been installed in a legitimate way.

Never install programs from unofficial stores on your device, only Google Play and AppStore products are trustworthy, Alexander Sanin, Commercial Director of Avanpost, strongly recommends. He told RSpectr that

You can not put seemingly harmless applications, but suddenly requesting access to SMS, email, camera, phone calls​

Alexander Sanin, "Avanpost":
- A conditional program for creating funny videos and photos that requires access to SMS should alert you right away. This means that the device will be used for some non-obvious purposes, and most likely you will not like them.

A. Drozd gives additional advice to "advanced paranoids":

Purchase and always use a dedicated USB charging-only cable​

Unlike conventional ones, they have not four or more, but only two pins (these are physical transmission channels in the "bus") - they cannot transmit data. This is necessary so that spy software is not "hooked" on your gadget through public chargers at the airport or cafe, when connected to someone else's PC.

Use comprehensive protection: PIN, fingerprint, face recognition. But cybersecurity experts warn that if they decide to study you quite seriously, then there is no salvation from spy software. An individual script for delivering the program to the device will be developed.

Image: RSpectr, Freepik.com

A source

 

[Частный детектив. Москва.]

But the defenders themselves and similar applications are also so-so. Don't trust it all

 

[Alexander Konovalenko.]

All Programs collect information about us. We are all under the hood. There is no complete trust in any program.

 

[Детективное агентство Израиль.]

I don’t believe at all that, for example, a government or some kind of hacker can wiretap your phone. But still the article is very interesting.

 

[alexsey1417]

I don’t believe at all that, for example, a government or some kind of hacker can wiretap your phone. But still the article is very interesting.

But there are Google and other market giants that can (or rather) listen to your phone.

 

[Частный детектив Азербайджан]

Но есть гугл и другие гиганты рынка, которые могут (а точнее) слушают ваш телефон.

Нууу, и виндовс как бы тоже так делает.

 

[Частный детектив Азербайджан]

Nuuu, and Windows, as it were, does the same.

To get rid of this, you need to fix something when updating Windows.

 

[David Mamedov]

Все Программы собирают информацию о нас. Всё под колпаком находимся. Нет полного доверия ни одной программе.

Даже в лично жизни.

 

[Kiril Harchevnikov]

Thanks for the valuable info! Thanks to! For more such posts

 

[Детективное агентство. Грузия.]

Well, it's even scary to find it on your phone.