Cellular Phone Hacking

Cellular phone hacking is a questionable practice whereby a third party gains access to an individual’s cellular phone through a variety of methods. The legality of cell phone hacking is heavily dependent on who is doing the hacking. For example, law enforcement and national governments often use cell phone hacking methods to apprehend criminals and monitor dissidents.
There have been many high profile instances of illegal cell phone hacking, particularly of celebrity phones. In 2007, a former journalist of the tabloid “News of the World” was charged with attempting to hack the phones of royal aides. In 2011, the same tabloid came under fire for hacking the voicemail of a 13 year old girl who was missing, possibly interfering with the investigation into what eventually proved to be her murder.

This term is also known as cell phone hacking, cell phone spying, phone hacking, or phreaking.

Simply put, cell phone hacking occurs when someone else gets into your phone. Depending on their motives, the hacker may simply view data stored on the phone, broadcast your location or send messages to your contacts under your name.

However, more serious instances of cell phone hacking involve hackers:

• Deleting data
• Adding malicious programs
• Gaining access to sensitive information like bank accounts
• Transcribing private conversations
• Storing copies of texts and emails

Common ways that a hacker gains access to your cellular phone include:

• Bluehacking - gaining access to your phone when it is a discoverable device on an unprotected Bluetooth network
• Unnoticed access to an unlocked phone left unattended in a public space
• Mimicry of a trusted network or cell phone tower
• Phone cloning by copying the SIM card of the target phone
• Malware apps that install malicious software or make changes to firmware
• Phishing via mobile optimized sites
• Fraudulent account resets using known information about the user (phone number, birth date, address and so on)

With so many methods available and more sensitive data being stored on smartphones and mobile devices, cellular phone security has become a major concern.

Applications aren’t the only things that can compromise your device. Hackers have three options for attacking a mobile device:

1. The device itself2. The network it connects to3. The applications it downloads

And many of us are at an unreasonable level of risk to attack. To put this in perspective, over the past year, Zimperium's customers detected hundreds of thousands of threats. They discovered that 94 percent of Android devices were not running the latest software version available, and about a quarter (23 percent) of iOS devices were not running the latest software version. They also found that about 10 percent of all devices were attacked via their network connections (MiTM, SSL certs, etc), which is a significant risk for companies with thousands of employees.

Companies like BlackBerry, Microsoft, MobileIron, and AirWatch have worked hard to create secure containers so that developers create secure apps. They work hard to encrypt data on the mobile disk and its network communication, but the same issue still applies. If the container is safe but sits on a platform that has been compromised, there’s no security at that point. The common analogy I use for this is putting up great walls on a shoddy foundation: if your phone’s operating system (OS) is compromised, it doesn’t matter how safe the app is.

Hackers have proved and displayed a significant increase in their attacks through mobile browsers and apps since 2015. RSA found that attacks through apps have grown from only 7 percent of all hacking attempts in 2015 to a whopping 40 percent of all attacks now. Attacks through the web and mobile browsers have fallen as hackers prioritize apps in their attempts to breach systems and steal information.

The reality at the end of the day is that we’re living in an increasingly connected world, and we still see that businesses haven’t yet set up the necessary security measures to keep up with this change. As a result, mobile devices and the apps that thrive within them will continue to be the channel of choice for cybercriminals to work havoc.

-Abbas Syed Ahmad

(Founder)