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Stealthy Google Play apps recorded calls and stole e-mails and texts

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Google has expelled 20 Android apps from its Play marketplace after finding they contained code for monitoring and extracting users' e-mail, text messages, locations, voice calls, and other sensitive data.

The apps, which made their way onto about 100 phones, exploited known vulnerabilities to "root" devices running older versions of Android. Root status allowed the apps to bypass security protections built into the mobile operating system. As a result, the apps were capable of surreptitiously accessing sensitive data stored, sent, or received by at least a dozen other apps, including Gmail, Hangouts, LinkedIn, and Messenger. The now-ejected apps also collected messages sent and received by Whatsapp, Telegram, and Viber, which all encrypt data in an attempt to make it harder for attackers to intercept messages while in transit.

The apps also contained functions allowing for:

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Posted on

Stealthy Google Play apps recorded calls and stole e-mails and texts

Enlarge (credit: portal gda)

Google has expelled 20 Android apps from its Play marketplace after finding they contained code for monitoring and extracting users' e-mail, text messages, locations, voice calls, and other sensitive data.

The apps, which made their way onto about 100 phones, exploited known vulnerabilities to "root" devices running older versions of Android. Root status allowed the apps to bypass security protections built into the mobile operating system. As a result, the apps were capable of surreptitiously accessing sensitive data stored, sent, or received by at least a dozen other apps, including Gmail, Hangouts, LinkedIn, and Messenger. The now-ejected apps also collected messages sent and received by Whatsapp, Telegram, and Viber, which all encrypt data in an attempt to make it harder for attackers to intercept messages while in transit.

The apps also contained functions allowing for:

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Not-so-secret DOD “spy drone” footage, live on the Internet [Updated]

On Wednesday, Kenneth Lipp, a contributor to the Daily Beast, was doing what amounts to a random search on the security search engine Shodan when he discovered what appears to be a Web console for full-motion video feeds from two Predator drones.

The website Lipp found bears the logos of the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's (NGA's) Aerospace Data Facility-East, and the Washington University Cortex Innovation Center—an incubator that has partnered with NGA. The site displayed streaming video from drones named "Ranger1" and "Bonker," apparently flying somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico along the coast of Florida. So he tweeted and blogged about it. Soon, many were watching the same thing: aerial surveillance video of boats speeding across the Gulf's waters.

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Apple Watch banned from UK cabinet meetings over Russian hacker fears

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The Tory government's cabinet ministers have reportedly been officially banned from wearing Apple Watches to crucial meetings in case they're compromised by Russian hackers.

"The Russians are trying to hack everything," one unnamed source told the Telegraph.

Apple Watches were said to be popular with several ministers, who wore them to cabinet meetings during David Cameron's tenure as prime minister, including former justice secretary and failed leadership candidate Michael Gove. However, under PM Theresa May—the former home secretary who repeatedly pushed for Britain's spooks to have greater surveillance powers—the devices have been summarily banned amid fears that Russian security services could listen in to government business.

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