Spy agencies target mobile phones, app stores to implant spyware
Users of millions of smartphones put at risk by certain mobile browser gaps, Snowden file shows
the world's most popular mobile browsers and planned to hack into
smartphones via links to Google and Samsung app stores, a top secret
document obtained by CBC News shows.
Electronic
intelligence agencies began targeting UC Browser — a massively popular
app in China and India with growing use in North America — in late
2011 after discovering it leaked revealing details about its
half-billion users.
Their goal, in tapping into UC
Browser and also looking for larger app store vulnerabilities, was to
collect data on suspected terrorists and other intelligence targets
— and, in some cases, implant spyware on targeted smartphones.
The
2012 document shows that the surveillance agencies exploited the
weaknesses in certain mobile apps in pursuit of their national security
interests, but it appears they didn't alert the companies or the
public to these weaknesses. That potentially put millions of users in
danger of their data being accessed by other governments' agencies,
hackers or criminals.
"All of this is being done in the
name of providing safety and yet … Canadians or people around the world
are put at risk," says the University of Ottawa's Michael Geist, one of
Canada's foremost experts on internet law.
CBC News analysed the top secret document in collaboration with U.S. news site The Intercept, a website that is devoted in part to reporting on the classified documents leaked by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden.
