Friday 25 July 2008, 5:52 PM

Mobile Security Expert: Your Camera Phone Got Hacked

Posted by MobileTech

Mobile Security Expert: Your Camera Phone Got Hacked
Author: Eric Everson, Founder MyMobiSafe.com

Have you ever heard someone say “I’d like to be a fly on the wall in that room.”? As the quality of mobile phone cameras continues to advance, that is exactly why mobile hackers are targeting camera phones. Celebrities are becoming hot mobile hacker targets as camera phone voyeur is on the rise.

As the founder of MyMobiSafe.com, I get emails like you would not believe. For some reason mobile hackers especially like to showoff what they can do. Imagine for a moment taking a ride with a celebrity like John Mayer via the camera of his crackberry and you’re starting to get the idea. Celebrities are becoming the target of such mobile offenses and they have no idea that they are even being targeted.

Need more mobile hacker proofs? Look at the latest Miley Cyrus photo scandal making its way through the web; these are photos picked off her mobile phone by a mobile hacker. The reality is that mobile snooping tools have become largely available and they are becoming all the rage for mobile hackers. Mobile snoopware is the largest contributor to these camera phone attacks. As handset level security remains at frighteningly low levels, people continue to treat their cell phones like they are hacker proof. In reality, if you would not trust your computer without antivirus protection, the same responsibility should be applied to your phone too.

As celebrities are just regular people with “glamorous” jobs, this suggests that they probably do not want the world watching everything about their lives through the camera lens of their phones. If you think about all of the places your phone travels with you, this kind of snoopware could open up a whole new chapter of reality television. What’s next a subscription website where you can pick your celebrity and ride around with their camera phone all day?

Why am I sharing this information? As an authority on mobile security, I think that it is important to share the reality of what is going on from the inside. There is a very dark reality to mobile hacking and in my profession I get to hear (and now see) way too much. What is the fastest cure to this issue if you are a celebrity of sorts? At this rate, I would half jokingly suggest covering your phone’s camera or buy a handset without one. In actuality there are also a growing number of handset level mobile security products that can help too. Mobile snoopware makes it all too easy to tailor an application to a specific handset and unfortunately, once again celebrities are in the spotlight. If you buy a mobile security product ask questions about protections against mobile snoopware first.

Mobile hacking is becoming more sophisticated than the phones themselves. With that said, I will continue to keep you ahead of the mobile technology curve!

MobileTech
-Your mobile security guru.

Eric Everson, Founder MyMobiSafe.com

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