Fergie's Tech Blog

Taiwan: Malicious Software Enables Cellphone Surveillance

Via The Taipei Times.

The Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) on Friday took into custody a manager of a company that sold illegal software allowing those interested in obtaining private information to send unidentified SMS text messages to infect cellphones.

Once a phone has been infected, the sender could listen in on private conversations and view the recipient’s text messages, police said, adding that people with cellphones using the Symbian 60 operating system were at the greatest risk of becoming infected.

Members of the National Communications Commission (NCC) and other law enforcement agencies on Friday searched the company after receiving information from the Taoyuan District Prosecutors Office, and discovered the illegal software along with chips.

A manager by the surname Koo (古) was taken into custody on charges of breaking the Communications Act (通訊傳播法) and violating privacy.

The CIB said that bugs in the Symbian operating system were exploited by the software, which was first invented in China in 2007, replacing more traditional methods of phone tapping where a chip had to be physically inserted into a phone.

posted by Fergie @ 3/07/2009 07:42:00 PM