spying on cell phones | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

In Brief The famous '60 Minutes' television show shocked some viewers Sunday evening when a team of German hackers demonstrated how they spied on an iPhone used by U.S. Congressman, then recorded his phone calls and tracked his movement through Los Angeles. Hackers leverage a security flaw in SS7 (Signalling System Seven) protocol that allows hackers to track phone locations, listen in on calls and text messages. The global telecom network SS7 is still vulnerable to several security flaws that could let hackers and spy agencies listen to personal phone calls and intercept SMSes on a potentially massive scale, despite the most advanced encryption used by cellular networks. All one need is the target's phone number to track him/her anywhere on the planet and even eavesdrop on the conversations. SS7 or Signalling System Number 7 is a telephony signaling protocol used by more than 800 telecommunication operators around the world to exchange information with one ...

By now, everyone knows that the major federal agencies and big organisations like FBI, NSA and CIA are spying on you under their massive global surveillance programmes. But here's the Kicker: Your local police might be spying on your activities, too. According to the recent details published by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), the police department of Erie County, New York, has used the controversial " Stingray " spying tool nearly 46 times since 2010 without any warrant. Also, the police department of Baltimore used the latest version of the Stingray surveillance device, called Hailstorm , more than 4,000 times in recent years, reports the Baltimore Sun. Late last year, we reported how US Marshals Service gathered data from millions of mobile phones by using a little device, nicknamed " Dirtbox ," in order to track criminals while recording innocent citizens' information. Dirtbox was used in spy airplanes to mimic mobile phone ...

Every week seems to bring news of another data breach, and it's no surprise why: securing sensitive data has become harder than ever. And it's not just because companies are dealing with orders of magnitude more data. Data flows and user roles are constantly shifting, and data is stored across multiple technologies and cloud environments. Not to mention, compliance requirements are only getting stricter and more elaborate.  The problem is that while the data landscape has evolved rapidly, the usual strategies for securing that data are stuck in the past. Gone are the days when data lived in predictable places, with access controlled by a chosen few. Today, practically every department in the business needs to use customer data, and AI adoption means huge datasets, and a constant flux of permissions, use cases, and tools. Security teams are struggling to implement effective strategies for securing sensitive data, and a new crop of tools, called data security platforms, have appear...