Hacked smartphones pose military threat

Hacked smartphones could endanger troops by sending location data to the enemy using mechanisms similar to those employed by recently discovered Android malware, experts say.

Malicious software that commandeers phone functions could give wartime enemies valuable information about troop locations and movements, according to Hugh Thompson, a software security professor at Columbia University and conference chairman for the RSA Confernece, and Markus Jakobsson, who works on the PayPal online security and malware strategy team.

“Even normal apps can send a lot of information back home,” Thompson says, and individual users are generally ill equipped to determine whether these apps represent security risks.

Jacobsson says he has discussed the problem with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In fact, DARPA brought it up. “I would say the military are aware of it but not very comfortable with it,” he says.

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