QUOTE
Smartphone security is heading for 'apocalypse'
By Colin Neagle
May 16, 2012 09:11 PM ET
Network World - The meteoric rise in the smartphone market is creating a dangerous vulnerability in smartphone security - one that may not be patched until the problem expands into what has been dubbed an "apocalypse."
Dan Auerbach, a staff technologist at the Electronics Frontier Foundation, points to outdated encryption standards and the inherent vulnerabilities of the baseband processor found on modern smartphones as the makings for a security hole through which users can be exploited at large.
The situation is similar to the PC boom of the late 1990s, Auerbach says. Just as PCs were designed to communicate freely with any and all network elements at the time, the baseband processors found on many of today's smartphones interact with any base station with which they come into contact.
At the same time, "the cost of having portable base stations has decreased quite a bit," Auerbach says. This has already enabled some police-state government agencies to create false base stations to monitor cellphone communications, he added.
"So you have just kind of a fake base station, and then you get a user's cellphone to interact with that instead of the real base station," Auerbach says.
More about at: http://www.computerw...for_apocalypse_
By Colin Neagle
May 16, 2012 09:11 PM ET
Network World - The meteoric rise in the smartphone market is creating a dangerous vulnerability in smartphone security - one that may not be patched until the problem expands into what has been dubbed an "apocalypse."
Dan Auerbach, a staff technologist at the Electronics Frontier Foundation, points to outdated encryption standards and the inherent vulnerabilities of the baseband processor found on modern smartphones as the makings for a security hole through which users can be exploited at large.
The situation is similar to the PC boom of the late 1990s, Auerbach says. Just as PCs were designed to communicate freely with any and all network elements at the time, the baseband processors found on many of today's smartphones interact with any base station with which they come into contact.
At the same time, "the cost of having portable base stations has decreased quite a bit," Auerbach says. This has already enabled some police-state government agencies to create false base stations to monitor cellphone communications, he added.
"So you have just kind of a fake base station, and then you get a user's cellphone to interact with that instead of the real base station," Auerbach says.
More about at: http://www.computerw...for_apocalypse_
