Android users BEWARE!!
"Chinese government hackers see every computer and smartphones in the world as their targets", a new research says.
According to Forbes, the report shows that Tibetan activists are being targeted with sophisticated malware designed to infect Android phones, allowing the malware’s operator to steal the user’s contacts and messages, and track his or her location.
Citizen Lab, a group of information security researchers at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto and Kaspersky Labs cited an example a few weeks back. To pinpoint a target’s location, data retrieved by the malware is designed to be combined with cell tower data from a telecommunications company. Ron Deibert, director, Citizen Lab says it is a strong hint and indicates that the malware was written by the Chinese government.
Deibert further added, “There is only one kind of organization for whom this information is useful. And we know that the Chinese have a very strong interest in tracking Tibetans, so it’s a strong set of circumstantial evidence.”
One of the contacts, a Tibetan activist, was observed to be sent a tweaked version of Kakao Talk, which is a mobile messaging app for Android. It was sent via an e-mail that appeared to be coming from an authentic contact. “The app was designed to periodically bundle the user’s contacts and text message history in a file called “info.txt” that was sent to a remote server masquerading as Baidu, the most popular Chinese search engine. And when the malware’s operator sent a certain code to the infected phone via text message, it was designed to hide that message and invisibly respond with information related to the mobile network and cell tower to which the user was connecting, data that could be combined with a database of cell tower locations maintained by a cellular carrier to pinpoint a phone’s location,” Verge reported.
"Chinese government hackers see every computer and smartphones in the world as their targets", a new research says.
According to Forbes, the report shows that Tibetan activists are being targeted with sophisticated malware designed to infect Android phones, allowing the malware’s operator to steal the user’s contacts and messages, and track his or her location.
Citizen Lab, a group of information security researchers at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto and Kaspersky Labs cited an example a few weeks back. To pinpoint a target’s location, data retrieved by the malware is designed to be combined with cell tower data from a telecommunications company. Ron Deibert, director, Citizen Lab says it is a strong hint and indicates that the malware was written by the Chinese government.
Deibert further added, “There is only one kind of organization for whom this information is useful. And we know that the Chinese have a very strong interest in tracking Tibetans, so it’s a strong set of circumstantial evidence.”
One of the contacts, a Tibetan activist, was observed to be sent a tweaked version of Kakao Talk, which is a mobile messaging app for Android. It was sent via an e-mail that appeared to be coming from an authentic contact. “The app was designed to periodically bundle the user’s contacts and text message history in a file called “info.txt” that was sent to a remote server masquerading as Baidu, the most popular Chinese search engine. And when the malware’s operator sent a certain code to the infected phone via text message, it was designed to hide that message and invisibly respond with information related to the mobile network and cell tower to which the user was connecting, data that could be combined with a database of cell tower locations maintained by a cellular carrier to pinpoint a phone’s location,” Verge reported.
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