2005/04/01

Securityfocus: tecniche di intrusione nei telefonini

How shall I own your mobile phone today? | The Register

...last month Paris Hilton had her Sidekick II hacked and the contents spread all over the Internet. We're talking some hot stuff here: private phone numbers of celebrities, childishly-written notes revealing all sorts of interesting personal and business details, and photos, including several nude pix... Although there's still some question as to just how Paris Hilton's phone was compromised, it seems that the answer to her security question wasn't that hard to guess: "What is your favorite pet's name?" Anyone who knows anything about Paris knows about her little chihuahua, Tinkerbell.

...What do you think happened when people found out? Was there an en masse switch away from the Sidekick II? Of course not, silly! ...According to the gossip blog Gawker, after the Paris Hilton incident, sales of the Sidekick II skyrocketed in New York, selling out in many stores. That's right. People specifically wanted the same phone that had just been hacked.

...As a window into the mind of your average Joe, this anecdote is priceless. It's a bit like hearing about the sinking of the Titanic, and then announcing that you're buying a ticket on an ocean liner since you just found out about cruises. It just goes to prove that ordinary people don't give a hoot about security... There are just so many interesting attack vectors for cell phones. To start with, there's the obvious threat of physical theft. It's one thing for a thief to heft a desktop box out of your office building, and it's easier to grab a laptop, but even my Mom can sneak a cell phone out past your guards... you can set phones up so that they appear to be off, leave the phone behind - say, in a conference room - and then call the phone and imperceptibly turn on the speakerphone, allowing you to hear everything said while you're out of the room....

Bluetooth can be a security hazard on some phones... a security group calling themselves Flexilis made the news. One of their members stood next to the red carpet at the Academy Awards with a laptop and an antenna hidden in his backpack, and the results weren't exactly unsurprising: between 50 and 100 of the celebs were vulnerable to bluesnarfing...

...For more info, also see http://www.thebunker.net/security/bluetooth.htm, which provides details and a list of vulnerable phones. And now that Bluetooth rifles effectively extend the range of the technology from about 33 feet to a full mile (!), things can only get more precarious.

Pagine per dispositivi mobili