Mobile World Cat

iPhone fans and other Smartphone customers have to watch out: A security examiner showed methods to spy on the BlackBerry customers during a presentation seminar Wednesday, as well as listening to phone conversations, reading text messages, stealing contact lists, figuring out the phone's location through GPS and taking and viewing photos.

And paradoxically, Sheran Gunasekera, who is head of the development and research at ZenConsult, told that the BlackBerry mobile phone is one of the secure phones available, in some ways or features better than the iPhone.

During a presentation seminar at the 'Hack in the Box' security conference in the Kuala Lumpur, Sheran Gunasekera also said that there is not any a technical method or ways for hacking this secure device and it is just too secure for that, therefore we have to depend on social engineering.

For mobile phone hackers, social engineering is the main way of tricking somebody into loading the spyware onto a gadget or looking for some other methods to install it, like borrowing the gadget and downloading the malware from a MicroSD card or the Internet ,for example.

One method to attract a BlackBerry customer is to download spyware onto their device is by providing a free application which appears to be a game application or some other safe software, however in fact it carries an unsafe payload. Appealing slideshows are even simpler to get customers to accept, Sheran Gunasekera said. He also said that he will have the slideshow running on top and the spyware its viciousness on the bottom.

What type of viciousness?
A small part of application able to cover up itself by not coming on the BlackBerry's software's menu or taking up a lot of memory space or using a lot processing power, could let a hacker to do all types of things. He said, people tend to put many personal files and informations on a Blackberry phone, from phone numbers to records of cheap airfare itineraries but it is not just the data on the device that is at risk.

Spyware on a Smartphone like BlackBerry can interrupt a phone call and allow the hacker to listen in, or even allow the phone hacker listen to a meeting or conversation the victim is sitting in on. By quietly answering the victim's call, subsequently turning on the device's speakerphone, the spyware cal let the hacker to eavesdrop the meeting or conversation over the phone. It can also forward outgoing and incoming or text messages to the hacker, and even allow the phone hacker to send messages from the one's BlackBerry, or increase the one's mobile phone bill by making local or international calls. The mobile phone hacker can also program the spyware to have the device's camera take images or pictures every ten seconds, for instance, in order to see find out the victim's place, where she is going or coming. One main example which shows a huge number of installations of the spyware or malware on BlackBerry smartphones in the United Arab Emirates.