Owning A New Phone
By Scott Granneman, SecurityFocus
It pains me to give this woman any more publicity, but Paris Hilton
and her cracked cell phone, the Sidekick II, really woke a lot of
people up. For those of you who recently returned from a stay in a
monastary somewhere high up in the Himalayas, last month Paris Hilton
had her Sidekick II hacked and the contents spread all over the
Internet. We're talking some hot stuff here: private phone numbers of
celebrities, childishly-written notes revealing all sorts of
interesting personal and business details, and photos, including
several nude pix (I'm not going to provide the link; just search
Google and you'll be able to find everything).
[Note: Although there's still some question as to just how Paris
Hilton's phone was compromised, it seems that the answer to her
security question wasn't that hard to guess: "What is your favorite
pet's name?" Anyone who knows anything about Paris knows about her
little chihuahua, Tinkerbell.]
That's pretty bad. I mean, here's this famous person, and her phone
gets brutally hacked and her whole life - and those of many others -
is completely disrupted, and everyone knows all about it. What do you
think happened when people found out? Was there an en masse switch
away from the Sidekick II?
Of course not, silly! We're talking about your every day end users
here. According to the gossip blog Gawker, after the Paris Hilton
incident, sales of the Sidekick II skyrocketed in New York, selling
out in many stores. That's right. People specifically wanted the same
phone that had just been hacked. Why? Perhaps part of the reason was
because a celebrity used it, I'm sure, but more because with the
added publicity they now knew about all the cool features built in to
the Sidekick II phone, like notes, photos, and the like.
As a window into the mind of your average Joe, this anecdote is
priceless. It's a bit like hearing about the sinking of the Titanic,
and then announcing that you're buying a ticket on an ocean liner
since you just found out about cruises. It just goes to prove that
ordinary people don't give a hoot about security (the fact that one-
third of email users have clicked on links in spam, and one in ten
have actually bought crap advertised in spam, only reinforces my
assertion).
That's really not good considering the specific devices we're talking
about here: modern cell phones, which have now morphed far beyond
simple telephone devices into Personal Information Managers, cameras,
and networking devices as well. If security pros tear their hair out
now trying to safeguard users' computers, I predict we'll all be
completely bald trying to manage the new super cell phones that
everyone is going to have in a short time.
How shall I own your phone today?
There are just so many interesting attack vectors for cell phones. To
start with, there's the obvious threat of physical theft. It's one
thing for a thief to heft a desktop box out of your office building,
and it's easier to grab a laptop, but even my Mom can sneak a cell
phone out past your guards (and she'll be out of jail in just a few
months, thank goodness... just kidding, Mom!).
As I've discussed before, you can set phones up so that they appear
to be off, leave the phone behind - say, in a conference room - and
then call the phone and imperceptibly turn on the speakerphone,
allowing you to hear everything said while you're out of the room.
Even criminals know about phones that go into "ghost" mode. Yes,
there are solutions, but how many of you have them as a line item in
your budget?
And then we have Bluetooth. I'm not going to begin declaring that the
sky is falling, and that Bluetooth on cell phones means that we're
all doomed. However, it would be imprudent not to evince some concern
and fail to admit the obvious: Bluetooth can be a security hazard on
some phones.
Just a few weeks ago, a security group calling themselves Flexilis
made the news. One of their members stood next to the red carpet at
the Academy Awards with a laptop and an antenna hidden in his
backpack, and the results weren't exactly unsurprising: between 50
and 100 of the celebs were vulnerable to bluesnarfing (ignore the
erroneous comparison the article makes between Paris Hilton and the
Academy Awards - the techniques used in each situation are completely
different).
This isn't the first time Bluetooth has been found to be problematic.
The previous link contains a good overview of several ways to attack
Bluetooth-enabled devices, including bluesnarfing, bluejacking,
bluebugging (similar to the "ghost phone" issue I mentioned above),
and the backdoor attack. For more info, also see
http://www.thebunker.net/security/bluetooth.htm, which provides
details and a list of vulnerable phones. And now that Bluetooth
rifles effectively extend the range of the technology from about 33
feet to a full mile (!), things can only get more precarious. It
would be worth your time to read these web pages and familiarize
yourself with Bluetooth and its problems, as well as its advantages.
That's right: advantages. Bluetooth is ultra-cool, that's for sure.
Automatically syncing phone contacts with computer contacts is
undeniably attractive to the busy info worker on the go, and wireless
headsets are also really nice. Bluetooth is just too useful to go
away, but it's up to security pros to educate users about the dangers
of Bluetooth-enabled cell phones and, in fact, non-Bluetooth phones
as well. As cell phones grow even more ubiquitous (is that even
possible?) and yet more powerful, people are going to store greater
quantities of very valuable information on them, just as they grow
potentially more accessible to bad guys. When it comes to cell
phones, we're going to need to keep our eyes - and ears - on them
constantly ... except when we're driving, of course.
Scott Granneman is a senior consultant for Bryan Consulting Inc. in
St. Louis. He specializes in Internet Services and developing Web
applications for corporate, educational, and institutional clients.
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