“Surveillance companies can use your iPhone to take photos of you and your surroundings without your knowledge, said a representative from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism at a panel chaired by Julian Assange today,” Anna Leach reports for The Register. “‘Who here has an iPhone, who has a Blackberry, who uses Gmail?’ Assange asked. ‘Well you’re all screwed,’ he continued, ‘the reality is that intelligence operations are selling right now mass surveillance systems for all those products.'”
“Companies also sell products that will let them change the messages you write, track your location and nick your email contacts, claimed speakers on the panel that included representatives from Privacy International and the aforementioned bureau,” Leach reports. “The privacy campaigners, speaking in London, pulled out some of the most sensational revelations in the 287 documents about the international surveillance industry published today by WikiLeaks (but you read it here first) The documents cover a total of 160 companies in 25 countries.”
Leach reports, “Steven Murdoch of Cambridge Security group said such software was being made by British companies including ones based in Surrey and Oxford. He added that even lawful interception was no longer targeted and backed up by suspicions. ‘We’re seeing increasingly wholesale monitoring of entire populations with no suspicion of wrongdoing – the data is being monitored and stored in the hope that it might one day be useful.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Um, yeah, we understand how it could happen with other mobile OSes, but how does this software get on our iPhones? The article gives no explanation as to how this immaculate installation of spy software supposedly takes place. Just because firms are selling spy software doesn’t mean it can magically materialize within your non-jailbroken iOS device.
Related article:
Apple: We stopped supporting Carrier IQ with iOS 5; never recorded keystrokes, messages or any other info – December 1, 2011
it’s like the jailbreakme website. iOS still has a lot of security holes that can be exploited
So, when I never go to a dodgy website with my iPhone, I’m not screwed, now am I?
I guess if you walked away from your iPhone, and some spy types tailing you got their hands on it, they could jailbreak it and install spyware on it and you’d be none the wiser.
This is a far cry from “you’re all screwed”, though. Seriously, Assange is an attention whore.
——RM
Julian Isstrange
Well that begs the question ‘How do you know before the event that it’s dodgy?’ they don’t exactly say ‘Come here for your malware’
Anyway, that’s somewhat redundant if the carriers install Carrier IQ software and enable a back door that other software vendors or the Gestapo, can use. The iPhone is not anymore able to withstand sophisticated surveillance just because ‘we’ only download from the Store.
The only way to remain anonymous – apart from not using any phone, would be to buy your phone with cash, PAYG account and top-up with a cash purchased voucher. Disable caller ID. Never have entries in your address book. Never use your or anyone else’s name verbally. Never use text and throw away your phone every day.
Nice world we live in.
In the case of iPhones the carrier isn’t allowed to install stuff and the software is checked for modifications when you update or restore the phone. The OS comes from Apple not the carrier.
So what you are saying is that if we want to hide, we have to work at it a bit. Is that a surprise to anyone?
And /that/ is why you never use any websites that tell you they “need” javascript: there either poorly written or their going to infect you with a virus
Oh wow, what a stupidly ignorant comment. Whatever gave you such a weird idea?
it must be terrible to live in fear like that
i do feel a little sorry for windows user now
JavaScript is actually very secure. It’s designed to not have any direct access to the operating system or file system, because of concerns for web security. It’s really only made to do web page manipulation. While there certainly have been security exploits involving JavaScript, they tend to be glitches in individual browser’s implementation of JavaScript and/or the operating system, which can be patched.
I agree that web pages shouldn’t require JavaScript, but not because of security concerns. It’s because everything websites do can usually be done with HTML and forms, and JavaScript can be added as an enhancement layer on top of it, that improves the experience by letting the page perform actions and load content without refreshing the entire page.
Oh brother!
So many things have to be just right for a website jailbreak to work. Which btw the user must initiate… (spirit jailbreaks were PDF exploits, can’t auto load them unless the user intended to load/view the PDF. Not like JavaScript can jailbreak an iPhone, at least I never heard of any scripts that can anyway)
Certain model, certain iOS version, certain things the USER must do…. Just to jailbreak an iPhone so 3rd party software can harm your iPhone.
Or in other words, nothing you have to worry about really. FUD, nothing else.
I’ve jailbroken iPhones many times… Even jailbreakme needed some user input to work.
“You’re screwed.”
Strange words coming from the likes of him.
What a fool. Why should anyone pay any attention to him anyway?
Julian Assange: “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT MEEEEEE!!!!”
——RM
Yup. Tell me again why a conference chaired by this guy should garner any attention?
Ahh MDN it’s in the OS. It’s called a back door.
Do you have any evidence of this? Or is this more “CORPORASHUNS ARE EVIL FIGHT TEH POWAR!!!11” stuff?
Apple’s products are the most closely scrutinized of any on the market. I’d be stunned if they could get away with something like that without it being pasted across every blog on the net.
——RM
Oh puleese!
Do you really think that just because you don’t personally know something for a fact or that the government doesn’t advertise it’s secret surveillance activities, that you are safe from prying eyes and ears.
On another note, Julian Assange has been living close to me while fighting extradition proceedings. He is on occasion seen in our small Suffolk town, in restaurants and down at my favourite local. He is quiet, well spoken, interested in ‘you’ rather than blowing his own trumpet. Attention seeker is the least apt description I would choose.
Intense maybe.
Is your tin foil hat a bit too tight today?
maybe. i can tell yours is very loose though. your head being buried in the sand might be a clue.
Just because Assange doesn’t walk through town shouting his name through a megaphone doesn’t mean he’s not an attention whore. Wikileaks became all about him.
——RM
The SOB deserves Prison.
After you, pygmy brain.
I remember that wuss crying about invasion of his privacy when his personal information was “leaked”! TOTAL. IDIOT. AND. FRAUD.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/WikiLeaks–Assange-complains-he-s-victim-of-leaks_8248512
http://grassrootsne.com/?p=1991
Aside of black door in the OS, government requires that companies would keep unencrypted information about their users.
One of the few times I have to say “Hold your horses MDN”.
I have been through US canada border control many times and on more than one occasion I have been asked to leave all electronic devices including cell phones in the car. An hour or so later they say you can go now. What do you think happens to your cell phones at that time?
they’re put in black helicopters and sent to Elvis.
the data is then analyzed by Elvis and Lee Oswald behind the picket fence, their findings are sent to Roswell, New Mexico for final analysis and sent to James Bond.
Agent Bond then makes the decision regarding your text messages about your girlfriend’s tits, and whether you should live or die. The data is finally stored at the National Archives next to the Zapruder film. Takes about two hours.
lol
Oh, so funny.
The Sean Connery Bond?
of course.
do you think such a responsibility would be handed to Pierce Brosnan? …get real.
The phone is sent to Roswell to get anal probed by aliens. Scary thing is the aliens are also wearing tin foil hats.
Apple apparently installed it up until iOS 5 arrived:
http://wp.me/p19WFc-ikj
It wasn’t for the purposes stated by these people nor did it have these capabilities, nor was it secret.
Julian is just irritated that he didn’t make Yahoo’s Top Ten Search Terms of 2011, while iPhone and Kim Kardashian did. I hear that he’s still livid that Skrillex was ahead of him in Google’s Top 10 last year.
Because Mr. Assange is now an international celebrity, he of all people, is now an expert in ‘moral’ issues – after his escapades in Sweden? Perhaps he should be on the list of 2-8.
Well, I am afraid that since 911, the population of a scared shitless country handed over power over privacy to the bureaucrats in government. They now require every computer chip to contain a backdrop that the government agencies and who knows else can trigger anytime.
The Brits stopped a huge terrorist attack (liquid bombs) against the U.S. because their bureaucrats stopped the operation. It’s the world we live in, like it or not.
By the way, Assange is an attention whore.
So thats what the smell is. Hey, but it’s brave shit!
Damn! And I just ran out of tinfoil.
I’ve got an extra roll that I’ll send over. Just be on the lookout for Elvis arriving in a black helicopter.
You must have been stockpiling that tinfoil since 1953, as I believe its last manufacturer switched to aluminum about that time.
It’s a little known fact that “tinfoil hat”, referring to comic paranoia, was considered funny originally NOT because the threat of mind control itself is ludicrous, but because those who fashion these “hats” pretend to be in the know about these things BUT lack appropriate technical knowledge, namely that the attenuation characteristics of Aluminum (Al) are very different from those of Tin (Sn), and won’t stop those mystery rays: not even close.
; )
Now this is a fact that I can believe in.
MASSIVE violation of our Constitutional RIGHT TO PRIVACY whomever does it!
Our Constitution is still the law of the land, no matter what political group thinks!
And with that little outburst, you are now officially on my list.
When Apple releases an iOS update, your firmware is replaced or updated and checksummed. Since Apple does this fairly frequently and it’s customers do upgrade, it’s doubtful that any population of iPhone users outside of a cracker convention is running unknown software. On the other hand, Android, as those wonderful charts show, almost never gets updated on any given user’s device, so there’s a real chance of exposure there. Now we all know to just check our CarrierIQ logs….
Well. He will probably end up right.
I think this is a person we will read about in the history books.