France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone, spy on people
France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone, spy on people
A bill that would allow police in France to spy on suspects by remotely activating cameras, microphone including GPS of their phones has been passed.
Does anyone know how this even works? Is the technology for this already in place?
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I’m not aware that either iOS or Android support this.
I see two options:
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Apple and Google build requested backdoor access, which I don’t think they want to do.
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The police get physical access to the phone temporarily to install a hidden app on it. Possibly using an insider.
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Bad guys buy pre-backdoored phones from cops. See the ANOM story. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/fbi-sold-phones-to-organized-crime-and-read-27-million-encrypted-messages/
I have not read the bill but I’ll guess they are legalizing #2.
DROPOUTJEEP .... "A software implant for the Apple iPhone that utilizes modular mission applications to provide specific SIGINT functionality. This functionality includes the ability to remotely push/pull files from the device. SMS retrieval, contact list retrieval, voicemail, geolocation, hot mic, camera capture, cell tower location, etc. Command, control and data exfiltration can occur over SMS messaging or a GPRS data connection. All communications with the implant will be covert and encrypted."
Yeah, if this can be done remotely then all smartphones by design are very insecure devices that shouldn't be trusted to doing card transactions or entrusting with password management and two factor authentication..
I wish they would go into more detail on the how of remote activation is made. Is it a law saying it is okay to do if it becomes possible? Is this through an exploit that was found and requires physical access to the device to initiate, or is it just a setting present on all phones by default.
I've seen this news published at a few different places, and IIRC they plan to use already existing exploits. You can read a bunch about what could potentially be used on the grapheneos website, specifically on how the modem and cellular network stack is very highly privileged on android at least, and it is very likely that most cellphones are vulnerable to some kind of code injection via a stingray, for example.
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