It’s been a month since the way the team Hacking Team could steal or monitor information of who was chosen as a victim, a case that sparked worldwide interest since it is software vendors lining the boundary of the discovered legality and was related to several companies and governments of different countries looking at this group of computer tools necessary to obtain information from certain people.
Their ways of proceeding were varied, but recently learned that the news of Hacking Team also used social networking applications and communications to steal data from the “victims” and not talk about any application in the list are: Facebook, WhatsApp, Viber, Google Chrome, Telegram and Skype.
Not talking about the official versions of these applications, Hacking Team alter these versions and then convinced by phishing victims to these applications installed externally to the AppStore, since those affected in this case were those using iPhone devices. Once applications are installed acted as a distraction while theft device data is performed.
False applications could steal from the Chrome browsing history, photographs of the device, steal SMS, to intercept calls on Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and WeChat, among others.
The discovery by FireEye also revealed that even if Apple implemented a iOS 8.1.3 patch that supposedly solved this method of hacking, Hacking Team also found a way to continue using the same method to trick users to installed applications modified outside the App Store.
For those wondering if affected devices should or should not have jailbreak to be violated, the answer is NO, it was not necessary because the applications were installed directly from a URL that could come in a simple email, just enough be enough compelling the victim to accept the installation, the rest is already known story.
At the moment it is unknown whether this method to steal information also existed for Android devices, but if your goal was to deliver solutions to all its customers possibly this also exist for Android, it’s a matter of time, if in a month we had so much information about how they work, in a couple of months it will be much more information.
