Carrier IQ found engaged in illegal wiretapping activities on smartphones – Part 1

World renowned rootkit developers, Carrier IQ have been found involved in wiretapping activities in Nokia’s Symbian OS, Google’s Android OS and Research In Motion’s (RIM) Blackberry OS. Connecticut systems administrator Trevor Eckhart revealed on Tuesday
that CIQ has been keeping logs of keys punched on these smartphones and deliberately sending them to major carriers like Sprint in the US.

This rootkit, according to Eckhart, keeps a record of every key tapped or punched on these phones for messaging, web browsing and even dialing a number. This tool then sends the log in encrypted form to Carrier IQ’s servers in the US and also sends information
in the form of reports or data in the form logs to primary carriers like Sprint or Verizon, whichever the user is subscribed to.

Paul Ohm, a former Justice Department prosecutor and law professor at the University of Colorado Law School, said that this kind of activity is a clear violation of consumer privacy rights and can be sued in a court of law.

“If CarrierIQ has gotten the handset manufactures to install secret software that records keystrokes intended for text messaging and the Internet and are sending some of that information back somewhere, this is very likely a federal wiretap.” he says. “And
that gives the people wiretapped the right to sue and provides for significant monetary damages.”

Ohm dropped an email at CIQ but is yet to receive any response from their management or the tech team involved in these audacious operations.

However, the rootkit developers posted a response on their website. It states:

“While we look at many aspects of a device’s performance, we are counting and summarizing performance, not recording keystrokes or providing tracking tools. The metrics and tools we derive are not designed to deliver such information, nor do we have any
intention of developing such tools.”

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Posted by Usman Khalid on Dec 1 2011. Filed under Latest News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry