Snowden: NSA planned to hack Google Play to spy on Android users

[info999]

THE US NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY (NSA) planned to hijack the Google Play store in an attempt to spy on millions of Android users, a report has claimed.

Published by The Intercept and CBC News on Wednesday, the report was based on a document leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

It said that the NSA developed the plan with allies in Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, a group known as the Five Eyes alliance, to plant spyware on smartphones via data links to app stores operated by Google and Samsung.

According to the document, the NSA and its partners were working on a number of tactics during "workshops" held in Australia and Canada between November 2011 and February 2012.

"The main purpose of the workshops was to find new ways to exploit smartphone technology for surveillance," the report said.

"The agencies used the internet spying system Xeyscore to identify smartphone traffic flowing across internet cables and then to track down smartphone connections to app marketplace servers operated by Samsung and Google."

The report also said that the method used to hack and hijack phone users' connections to app stores so that they would be able to send malicious "implants" to targeted devices was being developed as part of a pilot project codenamed Irritant Horn. The implants would then be used to collect data from the phones without their owners noticing.

The project was in response to concerns sparked by the Arab Spring in late 2010, in which a number of countries' governments were overthrown. It is believed that the NSA and its partner agencies did not want it spreading.

Google is refusing to comment on the report.

It was revealed earlier this year that the NSA considered dropping its local mass surveillance practices before Snowden made his revelations, but decided that it was not worth bothering the board with the question.

Observers could see why it might have a been a good idea for the NSA to cancel that controversial programme back then. It would still have been controversial, but it might have been far less controversial and the NSA might not quite be as damned as it is today.

What might be a bit confusing is why the NSA did not mention this before and kept on defending the system publicly and repeatedly, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out. µ

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2409816/snowden-nsa-planned-to-hack-google-play-to-spy-on-android-users

[bubbada]

godseye is comming. :P

[212eta]

In Echelon we...trust...