Posted on 05/22/2015 1:31:31 PM PDT by grundle
The National Security Agency planned to infiltrate the Google and Samsung app stores to plant spying software on smartphones, according to new documents published from files leaked by Edward Snowden.
The Intercept and CBC News jointly published the documents Thursday, which outline the snooping efforts designed by the U.S. and its Five Eyes alliance: Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia.
The intelligence agencies came up with the strategy as a potential way to hack smartphones. The pilot project was code-named IRRITANT HORN.
Essentially, the agents sussed out smartphone Internet traffic by browsing through its Web traffic database created under the XKeyscore program. They would then track down those phones connections to an app marketplace. Once identified, agents could hijack that connection to the app store and use it as a delivery system to plant spyware on the device.
These implants could gather data from the phone, including emails, texts, browsing history, call logs, videos and photos.
Previous Snowden disclosures revealed the Five Eyes agencies were collecting this type of information, but it was unclear what methods they were using.
Hijacking the app store connection also gave spies a permanent connection to the phone that allowed them to send selective misinformation to the targets handsets.
This tactic was apparently part of a broader attempt to monitor and possibly mitigate future Middle East and North Africa uprisings similar to the Arab Spring protests that swept the region in 2010 and 2011.
Delivering malicious software through infected smartphone apps is an increasingly popular method for hackers to access smartphones.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3292197/posts
`Jeb Bush says not a shred of evidence that NSA violated civil liberties’
> according to new documents published from files leaked by Edward Snowden...
And where is Snowden now? And for whom does he work?
It is time to dedicate a statue to Edward Snowden in Washington DC, on the order of the Lincoln Memorial.
Ah, the old “ad hominem”, that always works.
Like this hasnt already happened?....
There is less than a smidgen of a chance that the NSA would do anything wrong....
+1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vFOax-Zzc
One certainly could not challenge their veracity.
How many lines of code are in a typical app? How many services subroutines do they call? Are there security scan apps to check on these things?
PS At least not wittingly.
Apparently led by the whitless...
If they spent nearly as much time spying on terrorists as they do on us and Tea Party members we’d be the most secure nation in the world bar none...
Which is smaller? A wit/whit or a smidgen?
I haven’t a clue.
> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3292197/posts
`Jeb Bush says not a shred of evidence that NSA violated civil liberties
He sounds like another guy I know but he likes to use “smidgen” instead...
Smidgen
I’m not sure. But a nit is smaller than a pip.
I assume someone is always keeping an ‘eye’ on me one way or another.
Even the sparrow has someone watching out for them.
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