NSA and GCHQ target 'leaky' phone apps like Angry Birds to scoop user data

The National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have been developing capabilities to take advantage of "leaky" smartphone apps, such as the wildly popular Angry Birds game, that transmit users' private information across the internet, according to top secret documents.

The data pouring onto communication networks from the new generation of iPhone and Android apps ranges from phone model and screen size to personal details such as age, gender and location. Some apps, the documents state, can share users' most sensitive information such as sexual orientation – and one app recorded in the material even sends specific sexual preferences such as whether or not the user may be a swinger.

Also iPhones are easily hacked by police...they Have a tool the plug into the iPhone and get all the data. No tool exists fir windows phone so windows phone is more secure.

Uh, no. . . The demonstrated hack was simplistic and worked only on UN-encrypted older iPhones. It also requires physical possession of the phone. The claim there is a cache of keys that have been pressed such as a key logger would keep that can be accessed is also completely bogus. The 4S has been on the market for almost three years. . . and almost anyone can set the iPhone to wipe the phone after a set number of failed attempts with the wrong code on even older iPhones. . . or encrypt the data.

Update: Mike Dickinson has clarified that Micro Systemation’s XRY tool doesn’t support the iPhone 4S, iPad 2 or iPad 3. It does, however, support the latest version of Apple’s iOS operating system, so he says that older devices that have the latest software installed are still vulnerable.
After bypassing the iPhone’s security restrictions to run its code on the phone, the tool “brute forces” the phone’s password, guessing every possible combination of numbers to find the correct code, as Dickinson describes it. In the video above, the process takes seconds. (Although admittedly, the phone’s example passcode is “0000″, about the most easily-guessed password possible.)
Dicksinson acknowledges that users who set longer passcodes for devices can in fact make the devices far tougher to crack. “The more complex the password, the longer and harder it’s going to be to access the phone,” he says. “In some cases, it takes so long to brute force that it’s not worth doing it.” That may have been the situation, for instance, in one recent case involving the phone of Dante Dears, a paroled convict accused of running a prostitution ring known as “Pimping Hoes Daily” from his Android phone; The FBI, apparently unable or unwilling to crack the phone, asked Google to help in accessing it.

Frankly, if the police have a legitimate reason to access an iPhone, they can petition Apple to access it with the correct court orders.

I fully expected your Angry Birds claim. . .

Good grief, read the actual report. I did. Your link is to a twaddle report on a study (no statistician would give it the time of day) that merely counted CVE reports over the existence of the development of each platform. . . and assumes that those CVEs are still exploitable vulnerabilities! How absurd!

iOS has existed far longer as a platform than either Android and Microsoft’s new Windows Phone, so yes, Apple has more reported CVEs over the years for iOS than either Google or Microsoft has for their platforms BUT, those vulnerabilities have have been long ago CLOSED and are not current vulnerabilities. To release a comparison report based merely on a mere count without normalizing the count for time is disingenuous to say the least. . . and most likely deliberately designed to be propaganda to benefit the competition.

It turns out to get the total counted against Apple’s iOS, some of the vulnerabilities this report counted were CVEs in UNIX from 1988, for Pete’s sake! This is clearly FUD when all other serious reports of true mobile security exploits show that better than 99% exist for the Android platform! Those few that have hit the iOS platform have mostly hit the jailbreaking community and THEY deserve what they get for opening their devices to anything that comes in.

You lame attempt to spread FUD is just exactly what I said in my last post. Untrue.

The point is that counting CVEs and comparing sheer numbers of reports is FUD when one is counting CVEs from the underlying UNIX plus the OS has been around far longer than the com parables, then equating numbers of antique reported CVEs as though they are still “vulnerabilities” and implying they are current risk factors is deliberately designed to detract from the bad publicity that is being garnered by another platform with REAL EXPLOITS. You are just doing what you have done for years. Quit spreading lies and FUD, FOR-q-Clinton.

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