Why Hackers Target Your Smartphone

Marshall Honorof, Tom's Guide

September 05 2013 10:59 PM ET

NEW YORK — Your smartphone is probably a much more tempting target for cybercriminals than your desktop computer, and unless you take proper precautions, it's easier to hack as well.
Think of it this way: Your computer might have sensitive work documents, banking information or personal records, but there are only a few ways people can access those files — in person, via a network or over the Internet.
Your smartphone is almost always on, connected to the Internet, logged into your email and social media, and likely has at least a username stored for your bank account. Your smartphone contains as much sensitive information as your wallet does — more, if you count the contact information for your family and friends.
A smartphone is a whole different beast, said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, the chief technology officer of AVG Technologies, an American subsidiary of the Czech security firm Grisoft. At an AVG event here on Sept.4, Ben-Itzhak explained that the average smartphone has several avenues of attack.

Smartphones can access the Internet, which puts them at risk for a variety of malware and compromising exploits, but malware can come via almost any phone function. Text messages are easily exploitable, especially since an average text-messaging app takes no security precautions. They open automatically and load as soon as your phone connects to a network; in effect, they can't be blocked.
At the Black Hat 2011 security conference in Las Vegas, researchers even demonstrated a proof-of-concept that infected iPhones with malware via charging stations. Although they did not distribute any harmful software, they showed that this behavior, called "juice jacking," could be a threat. If a malicious hacker ever implemented a scheme like this, he or she could conceivably infect hundreds of phones each day.

Hackers also monetize these hacks in fairly subtle ways. Rather than stealing credit card information to buy themselves luxury yachts or scads of DVDs on Amazon, tangible goods that are extremely easy to track, they often subscribe users to premium texting services, which often cost as little as $3 per month.
These scams are much more common in Eastern Europe, where users get charged for premium texts on-the-spot rather than monthly.
Many (but not all) users will catch the extra charge on their phone bills, cancel the service and prevent the malefactors from ever getting their money. But an enterprising hacker can nickel-and-dime his or her way into relative richness.

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Hackers do not represent the only mobile threat, either. Leaving your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth functionality activated when you don't need to do so represents a considerable privacy risk. Phones broadcast signals that reveal their model number and location information, and some malls are now leveraging this feature.

By tracking phones, malls can get a good idea of their shoppers' demographics (even though there's no way to identify users, phone preference varies by age, sex and race), which shops their patrons visit and how the two correspond. If users download retail-specific apps, stores can also track when users enter and leave their premises and communicate accordingly, but downloading an app at least allows the user to choose whether or not to participate.
Retailers are not the only entities interested in aggregating mobile data. Up until recently, recycling bins in London had the same functionality. The City of London wanted to gather data on cellphone usage without any apparent end goal in mind, and walking by a recycling bin while your cellphone's Wi-Fi is active would transmit your phone's build and location information directly to the British government.

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Public outcry put an end to the invasive bins, but while the City of London — which represents only a small, somewhat separate financial hub in London, not the larger city — was the first government entity to try such a tactic, it probably will not be the last.
In order to keep your mobile information private and safe, keep Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned off unless you need them, and install a mobile security suite on your phone. Ben-Itzhak also recommended disabling or uninstalling social media apps — the HTML versions of Facebook and Twitter are more secure, and much easier on a phone's battery life.
This story was provided by Tom's Guide, a sister site to TechNewsDaily.

 

MIT Creates Code To Make Invisible Motion Visible - Now Open Source Code

Researchers at MIT have developed a method (Eulerian Video Magnification) to take any video and amplify the small changes that are normally invisible to the naked eye. This methodology is its infancy but it can already accurately measure heart rate just by measuring small differences in skin color. The algorithm matched extremely well with an EKG machine connected to an infant in hospital care.

Since they are able to apply this code to any video, they were even able to measure the pulse of Christian Bale in “Dark Knight Rises”, even with the make up on.

There seems to be an obvious application in airport security and instantly measuring the pulse of a potential terrorist just by looking at a video. Or by measuring the “micro-expressions” on the face of a perp in interogation. (Link to practice your micro-expression reading – http://www.cio.com/article/facial-expressions-test
They have released the MATLAB code for non-commercial use. A link is included at http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/. When this gets in the hands of the public, there is no telling what interesting uses will surface.

Microsoft's Digits Allows Computer Interaction With Hand Gestures..

Microsoft’s research lab in Cambridge, UK has developed a new way to interact with the digital world using intuitive hand gestures. “Digits” uses 3 different IR cameras to track the positions of fingers with respect to each other.
One of the applications for this technology includes 3-D spacial interaction with a mobile device. By assigning gestures to certain functions, the user could conceivably control any aspect of a device. This also allows for vision free control of the device. In example used in Microsoft’s video, they assigned the the “thumb’s up” to answer an incoming call.
Other applications include sign language interpretation and endless possibilities for gaming. Could this be the new controller for XBox 720? Guess we will have to wait to find out.

Oriental Cyeber World: How Water Could Help Make Better Batteries.. Cha...

Oriental Cyeber World: How Water Could Help Make Better Batteries..
Cha...: How Water Could Help Make Better Batteries.. Charles Q. Choi, TechNewsDaily Contributor | June 11, 2013 10:38am ET ...

How Water Could Help Make Better Batteries..

Charles Q. Choi, TechNewsDaily Contributor | June 11, 2013 10:38am ET

Water could be the key to producing a cheaper, more environmentally friendly and less dangerous way of making the lithium-ion batteries that power so many everyday gadgets, researchers say.

Currently, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are typically found in mobile devices such as cellphones, laptops and tablet computers, and they are increasingly being used to power hybrid and electric vehicles. As their uses grow, scientists would like to manufacture the batteries in a manner that's both less expensive and more environmentally friendly.

"The application of lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles is hindered by their high cost," researcher Jianlin Li, a materials scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, told TechNewsDaily. "For example, the cost of the lithium-ion batteries in the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Colt is about $500 per kilowatt-hour, which is almost five times of the target cost — $110 per kilowatt-hour — of an electric vehicle lithium-ion battery set by the president's EV Everywhere Grand Challenge."

 Google and NASA Buy Problem-Solving Quantum Computer.

Elizabeth Palermo, TechNewsDaily Contributor
May 16 2013 02:42 PM ET

Two of the biggest names in technology have teamed up to solve the world's problems using artificial intelligence. Google and NASA announced today (May 16) their joint purchase of a quantum computer that can perform complex calculations thousands of times faster than traditional supercomputers.

The Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, as the computer system is called, will be housed at NASA's Ames Research Center. Google and NASA purchased the computer from D-Wave Systems of Burnaby, British Columbia, in cooperation with the nonprofit research corporation Universities Space Research Association.

According to Google's research blog, the lab will be used to study machine learning, which is the way computers keep track of patterns in information in order to improve outputs. The spam filters used by email providers and your smartphone's ability to understand spoken language are both examples of machine learning.

But Google and its partners hope to the AI Lab to solve more serious problems than junk mail and where to find the nearest taco stand.

"Machine learning is all about building better models of the world to make more accurate predictions," Google said in its blog post. "If we want to cure diseases, we need better models of how they develop. If we want to create effective environmental policies, we need better models of what's happening to our climate."

And of course, Google also mentioned the usefulness of a quantum computer in solving the machine learning problems associated with building a more efficient search engine.

To that end, Google said it has already developed some handy quantum machine learning algorithms; one which produces hyper-efficient recognizers and that will make searches on mobile devices more energy-efficient, and another that can sort through vast amounts of "highly polluted," or mislabeled, data.

Outside of these new algorithms, Google said it's already learned a valuable lesson from its new toy: don't try to reinvent the wheel. According to Google, the immediate future of artificial intelligence lies in combining quantum computing with classical computing methods.

To explain the interaction between these two computing methods, Google used the analogy of trying to build a house. You have to balance a lot of constraints to build a house- budget, usage requirements, space limitations- while still trying to create something beautiful. Classical computers alone aren't very good at this balancing act.

However, when you mix quantum computing with classical computing, you can solve problems more like a flesh-and-blood architect would - in a way that is both mathematically accurate and creative.

"We hope it helps researchers construct more efficient and more accurate models for everything from speech recognition, to web search, to protein folding," said the Google post. "We actually think quantum machine learning may provide the most creative problem-solving process under the known laws of physics."


While Google is still talking about its new acquisition in terms of how it can be used to solve global problems, it's also interesting to consider the more distant applications of such a powerful and intuitive machine. Will the marriage of classical and quantum computers bring us one step closer to the Singularity?

Given the newness of the AI Lab, that idea might seem far-fetched. But with Ray Kurzweil as Google's director of engineering, a sci-fi near-future doesn't seem all that unlikely. It might be wise to keep an eye out for Cylons, or at the very least, some interesting developments in the field of AI