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You may believe that evil – genius hackers are only to be found in movies, but if you understood by now that reality can beat the most imaginative science – fiction silver screen production, you will find this news terrifyingly brilliant: a bunch of London hackers developed a hacking smartphone drone that can steal your private information directly from your cell and it does it so amazingly simple and easy, you can’t help but wonder how come they didn’t invent it sooner. Or did they? While drones are nothing new to us, this one takes the cake by far with its evil genius features.
Say hello to Snoopy, a drone that can fly past you and hover around while you are innocently trying to find a Wi – Fi network connection for your smartphone. The technology that comes with every smartphone or tablet available on the market makes your devices prone to search for nearby networks you already accessed before, and this gives you total vulnerability in the curious eyes and greedy hands of Snoopy. The drone will mimic a network connection nearby and your phone will not – knowingly connect to the drone’s signal instead of the real network. From that point on, everything you send and receive via the Internet belongs to Snoopy: it can be anything from your location you so proudly shared on Facebook, to the e-mail password or even other important personal accounts data, not to mention credit card information and
The hacking smartphone drone was developed by a team of researchers who, contrary to all appearances, don’t want to use the drone for illegal purposes such as gathering personal data and identity theft or credit card fraud, but to increase smart devices’ manufacturers of the vulnerabilities and flaws of such gadgets. They also say it has positive applications, like locating in real time all sorts of on – going felonies and thus alerting the authorities. However, you’d have to have your Wi – Fi settings turned on.
Snoopy will be presented soon at the at the Black Hat Asia cybersecurity conference in Singapore and even if everything sounds terrifying, the developers assure us the drone is going to be used only for the greater good of mankind. But to make sure, if you happen to walk the streets of London (or any other city for that matter), turn off your Wi-Fi settings and make your smartphone ask for your permission before connecting to a network. Snoopy is watching!
