goon2019
Posts 392
|
How strangers can hack the phone in your pocket
In today’s world, there’s really only two types of companies or two types of people which are those who have been hacked and realize it and those who have been hacked and haven’t.” That’s what mobile security expert John Hering tells 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi about the danger of cellphone hacking on this week’s broadcast.
While most people worry about their computers getting hacked, Hering explains that phones are vulnerable, too. To prove his point, Hering assembled a group of ace hackers at a Las Vegas hotel where the 60 Minutes team was staying. In the video above, 60 Minutes Overtime explores what happened.
The hackers Hering gathered, all of whom try to identify security weak spots in order to protect the public, were in Las Vegas for Defcon, a conference that draws roughly 20,000 hackers each year to trade secrets and share information.
60 Minutes producer Howard Rosenberg asked them to share some of their tricks. “We worked on this story for well over two years and during that period of time, we were constantly challenging the hackers to take it to another level and to demonstrate for us what they claimed,” he tells 60 Minutes Overtime editor Ann Silvio. “They say, ‘Everything is hackable.’ And we kept saying to them, ‘OK, prove it.’”
And prove it they did. One hacker, Jon Oberheide, showed 60 Minutes an app he created that looks legitimate but allows him to take control of a phone and suck out its information. He demonstrated for Alfonsi how he could instantly pull up her contacts, recent purchases and text messages. “It’s almost uncanny to watch how creative these folks are,” says Rosenberg.
Another hacker, Adam Laurie, uses radio frequency identification to hack phones. “So the way this hack worked -- he didn’t need my phone number,” Alfonsi explains. “All he had to do was physically touch my phone.” He demonstrated by brushing by her in the lobby of her hotel. When he did, he used a special hand-held device to push a credential across to her phone so it trusted his Bluetooth and actually dialed Laurie, allowing him to listen in on anything discussed in the room with Alfonsi’s phone.https://www.ttspy.com/hack-phone-contacts.html
|