smartphones are effectively the ultimate
spy tool back in the day even ten years
ago if you wanted to surveil somebody or
spy on somebody you had to physically
follow them or break into their house
and plant a bug in their big
old-fashioned phone or plant cameras
these days we seem to have voluntarily
handed ourselves over to be spied on
because we carry the most advanced
spying device on the planet in our
pocket this thing you know it contains
all of our personal lives our secrets
our emails our credit card numbers it's
got a microphone it's got a camera it's
got a GPS unit so it's absolutely
wonderful for tracking people
no technology is bulletproof but the
problem is that for the average user
they may not realize insecurities of
their phone and to a large degree they
they have betrayed us they're kind of
beautiful like these little devices that
have so much power that is actually
untapped I don't think anything is
secure ever there's so many possible
ways so many side-channel attacks I mean
for years smart phones have been
collecting all sorts of data about us
that nobody knew they're tracking us you
know the track of what we're doing
is that good or bad you know that's
that's up to the person who you know
who's holding that device and whether
they want that or not the problem is a
lot of people don't know that mobile
phones are the next frontier for hackers
and they present a very juicy target
they're not the easy target by any means
it's a lot easier to hack a laptop than
it is to hack a phone but certainly
we've seen some pretty sophisticated
hacks in recent years against phones a
smart phone can jump onto any wireless
network and you're typically encouraged
to touch it on bottom to wireless
networks because you're on a charge for
your data plane when you jump onto a
network you are forever bound to that
network unless you delete it each time
which close field zone anywhere in the
world you go if someone can recreate
that network just the name they don't
need to know anything else just by
creating that name your phone will jump
on even if it's in your pocket even if
it's not open the apps that are running
in the background whilst are going over
that network so without you doing
anything your phone is now sending
information through this potentially
malicious network and you don't even
know effect if you like to go to a party
you walk in and you shout the name of
every person you've ever met just in
case they're there now you're on my
network you're not actually at a coffee
place and once you're on my network all
of your traffic everything that's going
over the internet is now going through
me so I have the ability to monitor the
ability to change adjust no networks we
joined automatic that's like the thing
that I'm
waiting it's always been known that you
can modify content when the person is
already out of network I demonstrated
that all of our mobile devices will
automatically join a network just based
off the name even if it's not really
that Network even if it doesn't have the
same unique identifiers or
characteristics this is sort of a
combination of probably you know four or
five different attacks all used together
so that it's essentially seamless I'm
creating a network right now that your
phone will automatically join so if you
go to a website I can control it you see
on the website if you go to a bank I can
make your credentials go to me I can
change things on the fly I'm injecting
packets into the network that basically
make your phone go through my computer
once all of your traffic is going to my
computer I can now control that traffic
so what's an example of that
misinformation that you'd be feeding me
on my cell phone
well thank you use what bank do I use
huh well let's go to a bank right open
like chase com oh well protected by
Bitcoin now of course you know this is
fake I could have made the page look
exactly the same and you wouldn't notice
anything except when you enter your
credentials and hit login you would have
just been logged in to me so when you
should be on a site that you'd normally
expect to be encrypted like a bank
because you were never redirected off I
now have full control if I can sniff
everything you're doing this is
essentially oh you know what we'd call a
man-in-the-middle attack verify what
else you got
okay open up your browser go to Vice
calm it should look pretty normal for
the most part yeah for the most part of
us part except for now there's an
article about Sammis drones on the
homepage of Vice calm on a site that you
trust that you go to that no nothing
else looks out of place almost I didn't
make it so obvious you
we would have just read in another
article and believed whatever
information it said it's so seamlessly
inserted - it's very subtle you know you
have to actually like read every
headline to realize yeah and this
doesn't affect yes always the actual
website that's not actually there right
it's just just your phone and anyone
else you're close by
I'm gonna log in to CNN we'll see
something that hopefully is not true at
the very top so breaking news about a
nine point five nine jurors quake in
California which I hope never happens
and really this can be done with any
Content I mean it scooby-doo images
videos I mean things you watch on
YouTube be replaced you could have every
major site on the internet and say you
know find a bunker you know leave
California immediately the fact that
this is still possible today and can be
done in I mean in less than a minute you
can set up a network and start
monitoring traffic it blows my mind
because you can do so much
one of the things that was done recently
to demonstrate that vulnerability is one
of the security researchers created a
drone that he was able to put out in the
year that was advertising a number of
these Wi-Fi signals and was able to scan
for all the phones in the vicinity that
were automatically connected to his
drone and in fact being able to
intercept all the communications now
because he was running a Wi-Fi hotspot
that all these phones are connecting to
in Glen Wilkinson Snoopy hack we see how
drones can act as moving Wi-Fi networks
in order to steal data from unsuspecting
phones to describe Snoopy in a sentence
it's a distributed tracking data
interception and profiling framework any
device that can run Linux on that has
the appropriate antennas and hardware
you can run Snoopy on that device they
detect mobile devices that people are
carrying and when they detect them they
send all the data they receive back to
some central server when your mobile
phone is looking for network say
Starbucks
it's possible for Snoopy to anse and say
yes I am Starbucks why don't you connect
to me and then your mobile phone will
connect to the device to my Snoopy
device and all your traffic will go
through it effectively see what you're
browsing see what you're searching for
what images you're looking at so if I
have a bunch of Snoopy drones these
little Snoopy devices deployed over say
the whole of London I can then track
people as they move through London based
on that unique identifier of their phone
now there are online databases that
allow you to map from the name of a
network to GPS coordinates to street
address to you know Google Street View
photograph potentially I can very
quickly someone just walks past me
determine where they where they live and
where they work and all of that is
completely passive so I've no
interaction with your device these are
just messages your devices shouting out
that specific attack dates back to 2004
this still hasn't been fixed which is
yeah pretty pretty worrying a little bit
silly we've got our aerial Snoopy units
that we're going to fly over a few parks
it's a small computer so essentially the
same very similar hardware to a laptop
has got a SIM card so it's got 3G data
to upload the data
a GPS antenna to get a GPS fix we know
where the data was collected and this
one's got a very small wireless card
here and run Snoopy with the detecting
people's Wi-Fi and it uploads that data
to my server in real time from the
device the UAV carries this device so
Snoopy is essentially software and it
can run on different hardware platforms
so effectively for all of the kids so
the flying machine the Snoopy the
cameras you're looking at probably
around say maybe a thousand pounds
fifteen hundred dollars somewhere around
there let's have a look at the data that
we managed to collect in the park 290
different devices who observed while
this guy was flying around all those
little blips each one the device that we
observed at the park today this is you
know the network's they've previously
connected to in their existence those
little brown blips so for example over
here this Apple device is previously
connected to cubbyhole West to lobby
Virgin Media Wi-Fi and these two vice
devices looking for the Marriott Lobby
but what we can do is try to geolocate
those fish locations of those networks
this BT home hub here this G rockets to
essentially two possible locations there
we go so that could be our volunteers
home there we see and see the full
address yet you can run this tool to
essentially capture credentials and here
login to yahoo comm so this device
trying to login to yahoo mail and fetch
as a soft strip data and there we go so
we see a login and a password you can
have the phone just be a launching point
to use other technology around you you
can just cause havoc now that we have
drones some are controlled wirelessly
which can be hacked and you can take
over drones scott jack is basically a
combination of software and hardware
that i created to demonstrate some of
the insecurities and drones you can
basically just use your phone to
actually control the entire drone
there's no encryption on the network
that you join so you actually join on on
a network and you start controlling it
so what I created was the sky jack
and sky jack is a drone itself and on
the drone I've mounted a small computer
and a wireless chip that's capable of
doing packet injection and monitor mode
where it can actually take over other
connections my drone can go fly around
it will automatically detect if there's
any vulnerable drone around and if it
detects that over the Wi-Fi signal
it actually takes over the connection it
disconnects the actual owner and then my
drone takes over and sends commands to
the new drone Amazon said that they
would actually be potentially using
drones to deliver packages skyjacking
out essentially to reroute it in Samy
Kamkar first-ever skyjacked
demonstration we see how phones instead
of being hacking targets control aerial
hacks this will be the first real-life
demonstration of skyjacked so basically
I'm installing a Raspberry Pi computer
so that this can take over another
wireless networks such as the parrot
drone essentially it's just constantly
detecting any parrots that are around us
so if there were let's say three or four
you know they would all start to get
controlled and then autonomously follow
follow the actions that we have
programmed we have our parrot drone here
which is the phone I'll be controlling
that will actually look for any parrot
drone around us and we'll take it over
when the iPad loses link we can watch
the video of the parrot on here and we
can just see it sort of lose access and
we'll lose video and controls
the sky drag from drone the white one
the Phantom is looking for this one when
sky jack takes over we haven't set up to
do a do a flip it's found the Wi-Fi
connection of this drone and once
discovered it's taken off the iPad that
was controlling this and now flying it
autonomously
and this is a had no control over that
once once a Skyjack take over
it's another testament of just sort of
how powerful devices in our hands are
you can run the same software on an
iPhone everyone has a phone everyone
carries their phone with them
all the time people don't realize that
this is a device that can continuously
record all of your surrounding sounds
not just when you're placing a phone
call but at any time it's really a very
attractive target for nation-states and
criminals to get access to we definitely
have a lot of information in our pockets
but that's a choice being on the
cellular network can be completely
transparent you don't know anything's
going on and your phone doesn't have any
malware or software installed listening
to voice is one thing it's been done for
a long time and this is not new
technology the interesting stuff
nowadays is data to show that phones are
not only hackable over Wi-Fi security
researcher Matthew sold Nick performs a
cellular interception so I'm going to
now have Cassandra logon to Facebook and
I'm going to demonstrate how easy it is
to get that information as you can see
this is purely cellular no Wi-Fi
Oh Oh you found out my password yeah
lovely
haha classy right okay so it appears the
data
oh and you can see my past so
here's the password is the reason why we
hack phones in the first place is to
prevent other people black hats from
doing it I'm demonstrating this to kind
of bring awareness that there are
security issues out there but also that
people should be safe with their data
cybersecurity is not just about
protecting data it's about protecting
people there are a lot of people that
come into harm's way dissonant groups
for example where nation-states are
spying through them through hacking
activities and are finding out about how
they're trying to subvert regimes these
phones have become a data collection
platform even for legitimate companies
smartphone is an ultimate spy tool
because it contains so much information
about us for criminals and others that
have an interest in exploiting this data
you're in this vulnerable population
where someone with great skills an
organized criminal organization or a
nation-state will come after you you
need to understand that that phone is
vulnerable if you're going to connect it
to a carrier that's owned by a country
that may dislike you if you're distant
they have a way to get into your phone
very very easily one of the main goals
of the Snoopy project is to raise user
awareness so I have look how trivial and
easy it was for from you know for us on
20% research time one day a week a
couple of evenings and weekends to
develop this type of dragnet security
that you could deploy or a massively
large area and track everybody intercept
all kinds of data so the rule if I could
do this imagine what a better-funded
more malicious more skilled attacker
might be able to do there's a almost a
little comfort in the fact that
everyone's exploitable right we're all
sort of on the same level here
it's not that one person is necessarily
walking around you know much worse off
than others but the fact is real if you
were let's say potentially targeted that
could be a problem nothing is totally
secure but we worry about what's called
the Internet of Things where all the
peripherals in our houses and in our
places of business are going to be
connected to the Internet somehow your
refrigerator your TV your thermostat and
as a result we're going to have all
kinds of vulnerabilities in the system
where they're going to be much easier to
hack and they're going to reveal all
types of information about you and
that's going to create a ton of
vulnerabilities that are going to be
exploited by a variety of different
hackers certainly criminal organizations
that will find some way to monetize that
data perhaps most alarmingly sometimes
you find Wi-Fi and pacemakers device so
you can implant it to your heart to keep
your life which just seems like a really
terrible idea I've also seen a modern
sniper rifle and on the website there
Bost and it can be controlled remotely
by a Wi-Fi which seems like a very
dangerous idea to be able to have a bus
on your firm that allows you to fire a
long-range bullet I suspect the
manufacturers should probably do more to
make the method technology more secure
interesting thing in security across the
whole spectrum security it's always a
balance between convenience and security
if hackers are breaking into things and
breaking technologies and tearing things
apart that puts pressure on the
defenders that creators of the
technology to make things more secure
and you have this kind of arms race that
goes back and forth and it's been like
this for decades the error of sort of
joke joke hacking of pranksters Israel
is really over today we're dealing with
really sophisticated actors we're
dealing with intelligence agencies
working for the most despotic regimes on
earth we're dealing with cyber criminals
they're tied to organized crime I have a
great passion for identifying those
folks for trying to bring them to
justice and helping to protect society
from their activities a lot of the
reason I released a lot of the software
and
to research as open-source and freeze so
people can not only understand it but
change it in a positive way once you
just understand you can make better
decisions what habits do be it
professional white hat hackers like
ourselves or more malicious ones is they
forced offenders to reevaluate their
position so by finding weaknesses and
demonstrating how easy it is to attack
those weaknesses then the defenders have
to effectively make their stuff more
secure which means everybody kind of
wins
they took someone very precious to me
now I'm coming for them
rated M for Mature
has been song