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New Android Malware App Turns Phone into Surveillance Device
by Michael Mimoso

Mobile malware has largely been limited to Trojans buried inside a malicious app targeting sensitive data stored on the phone such as email, contact information and SMS messages. A new proof-of-concept piece of malicious software, however, expands the scope of mobile malware and essentially turns an Android device into a surveillance tool, bringing a while new range of security and privacy implications into the equation.

Researchers from the Naval Surface Warfare Center and Indiana University’s School of Informatics and Computing introduced PlaceRaider late last week, putting a new spin on burglary and espionage while coining the term visual malware. PlaceRaider exploits innate weaknesses in Android to use the phone’s camera to surreptitiously take photographs, and send that data off to a command and control server where an attacker could build a 3D model of the victim’s environment.

“Remote burglars can thus download the physical space, study the environment carefully and steal virtual objects from the environment such as as financial documents, information on computer monitors and personally identifiable information,” the researchers wrote in a paper published last week.