FBI Taps Hacker Tactics to Spy on Suspects | Hacker News Reader

FBI Taps Hacker Tactics to Spy on Suspects

online.wsj.com

44 pointscarolinea11 comments

Interesting paragraph here: "The FBI develops some hacking tools internally and purchases others from the private sector. With such technology, the bureau can remotely activate the microphones in phones running Google Inc.'s Android software to record conversations, one former U.S. official said. It can do the same to microphones in laptops without the user knowing, the person said. Google declined to comment."

Yep. Also see my article from 2006:

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029-6140191.html "The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations. The technique is called a "roving bug," and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him."

What is amazing is that the same government that is funding these activities has also drummed up the fear of Chinese attacks on our computer systems. The same techniques being used by the FBI could be used for industrial espionage or to spy on government officials. We cannot have it both ways -- either we give up on expanding law enforcement power like this and encourage computer security, or we give priority to the police and accept attacks by foreign powers (and ironically, criminals) as collateral damage.

This is just using FinFisher/Spy malware to turn on the mic it's in their advertisement that was leaked by Wikileaks to youtube. Typically deployed as a fake update or some other popup screen the user has to agree too. They could also use Playstore to download/install whatever apps they wanted and unlock the phone if Google cooperates with investigations (they probably do) without needing your approval.

Another method would be to send binary OTA SMS messages to the carrier's closed simcard and turn on the mic, or camera, or ping it with type 0 sms so everytime your sim ackknowledges they can track you regardless of gps being disabled.

"Google declined to comment".

So, does the FBI now use National Security Letters as part of their regular law enforcement operations or does Google keep quiet about this just because this sounds bad?

This could mean a multitude of things. I wish the article had reference to some source. I seriously doubt that FBI can choose to record from any brand new Android phone - the entire OS being open source and routinely disassembled by the folks at xda.

More likely the source of this is some malware/virus/app that when installed, grants FBI the ability to activate the mic at will. In which case, the article would be somewhat misguided.

So does this bug show up on http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list ?

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