How to hack a phone:
How to hack a phone: 7 common attack methods explained
Mobile security often beats PCs, but users can still be fooled and smartphones can still be hacked. Here’s what you need to watch for.
7 ways to hack a phone
- Social engineering
- Malvertising
- Smishing
- Malware
- Pretexting
- Breaking in via Bluetooth
- Man-in-the-middle Wi-Fi attacks
1. Civil Engineering
The
easiest way for a hacker to get into any device is for the user to open
the door. Achieving this is certainly easier said than done, but it is
the goal of most social engineering attacks.
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Smartphone operating systems typically have
stricter security rules than computers or servers, operating in isolated
application code that prevents unauthorized access and device
hijacking. But this massive security model, where mobile users must take
affirmative action to access protected areas of the phone's operating
system or storage, has a downside: we learn to configure it to cause a
lot of pop-up messages. "Mobile apps remove specific permissions to
protect your users from malicious apps that exploit free-for-all data,"
said Catalino Vega III, security analyst at Kuma LLC. A prompt appears:
"Do you want to allow this app to access your photos?" "
"It
really adds one more step to getting into the program," he said. "With
how the user experience receives some offers as a gateway to access
features, most users will allow the application to access what they
want. I think that's something we are all guilty about." point "
2. Malvertising
A
very important vector for this type of fraudulent communication is
called "malicious advertising," which connects to the infrastructure
created for the mobile advertising ecosystem in browsers or
applications.
"The goal is to get you to click on ads," says
Chuck Everett, director of cyber advertising at Deep Instinct. "They try
to trick you with something that will hit you sooner than you think - a
panic reaction or a warning or a warning." The goal, he said, is to
"scare or trick you into clicking a link."
For example, there is a
game called Stop, designed to trick users into unlocking their Android
phones by tricking them into disabling security features and installing
other malware. Parking is not available in the official Google Play
market. "67% of malware can be downloaded from the Google Play Store,
while only 10% comes from third-party markets," he said. "On Google
Play, users rely on other users' reviews to determine whether an
application is safe or not. Do not use it." Instead, "Apple carefully
reviews every app in the app store, which reduces the number of apps,
but significantly reduces the number of apps reported as malicious."
3. Smishing
Another
vector attackers use is SMS text messaging to get that important
clickable link in front of their victims, a completely different
engineering trick in life; This practice is known as SMS fishing or
spoofing, and it attracts unsuspecting as well as high-level executives.
"Depending
on the intentions and goals of cybercriminals, there are different ways
to use SMS phishing," said Rasmus Holst, CRO Wire. "If the goal is to
install malware on a device, a file is attached with a message that
convinces the user to click and download it. For example, a
cybercriminal can pretend to be a trusted person, such as reviewing an
attached document from an employer. or employee, and large, unsuspecting
victims. employers or the manager asked him to set a trap for. Two
years ago, Jeff Bezos' phone was hacked after he downloaded a single
video file from a trusted contact. In some cases, hackers. The use of
mobile browsers in zero days can send malicious files to the phone
without permission user when the link is clicked."
4. Malware
Hackers create legitimate
applications, such as free VPNs, so that users download malware onto
unsuspecting users' devices," he said. "Once this malware is installed
on a device, they detect whether the device is rooted or jailbroken - if
so, they steal identifying information and other sensitive information.
Once the device is jailbroken, the operating system is compromised and
it is easy to access passwords. , chat, or bank account or bank. and
access other login information, such as payment information."
5. Pretexting
if
the user won't give up control of their device willingly, an attacker
can go over their head to their mobile provider. You might remember the
mid '00s British media scandal in which tabloids used what they called
"blagging" techniques to access the mobile voicemail boxes of
celebrities and crime victims. This process, also known as pretexting,
involves an attacker piecing together enough personal information about
their victim to plausibly impersonate them in communications with their
phone provider and thus getting access to the victim's account.
The
tabloids were just after scoops, but criminals can use the same
techniques to do even more damage. "If successfully verified, the
attacker convinces the phone carrier to transfer the victim's phone
number to a device they possess, in what's known as a SIM swap," says
Adam Kohnke, Information Security Manager at the Infosec Institute.
"Calls, texts, and access codes—like the second-factor authentication
codes your bank or financial providers send to your phone via SMS—now go
to the attacker and not you."
6. Breaking in via Bluetooth
7. Man-in-the-middle Wi-Fi attacks
They’ve broken in, now what?
Once
an attacker has used one of the techniques outlined above to gain a
foothold on a smartphone, what's their next step? While smartphone OSes
are ultimately derived from Unix-like systems, an attacker who's managed
to force a breach will find themselves in a very different environment
from a PC or server, says Callum Duncan, director at Send code
Cybersecurity.
"Most apps interface with the operating system and
other applications on what are essentially API calls," he explains.
"The kernels for iOS and Android are so vastly different from anything
that would resemble their Unix base that shared exploits would be almost
impossible. Command lines do exist for both devices but are only
accessible the highest level of privilege for both devices and can
usually only be accessed but rooting or jailbreaking the device."
But
just because it's hard doesn't mean it's impossible. "Exploits of that
type do exist," Duncan says. "Privilege escalation would be key to this
process and working around inbuilt safety mechanisms would be hard, but
any attacker with the ability to run code on a user's device is doing
just that — running code on a user's device — so if they're smart enough
they could make that device do whatever they please."
Caitlin
Johanson, Director of the Application Security Center of Excellence at
Coalfire, says that a surprising amount of sensitive data is accessible
to attackers who gain a foothold on a device. "Data stores such as
SQLite get created by installed apps and could contain everything from
web request and response content to potentially sensitive information
and cookies," she explains. "Common weaknesses observed in both iOS and
Android include caching of application data within memory (such as
authentication credentials), as well as persistence of thumbnails or
snapshots of the running application, which could inadvertently store
sensitive information to the device. Sensitive information—most often
left unencrypted—is found in abundance within browser cookie values,
crash files, preference files, and web cache content created in
easy-to-read formats stored right on the device."
"The very tools
created for development purposes are what makes it easier for an
attacker to extract, interact with, or even modify this kind of data,
such as abd on Android or iExplorer or plutil on iOS," she continues.
"Standard utilities can be used for the examination of any database
files copied from the device, and if we run into the need to decrypt,
there’s tools like Frida to run scripts to decrypt stored values."
Thick (like Hacker)
We don't mean to oversell how simple any of this is. Most users don't jailbreak their phones, click smishing links, or give enhanced privileges to dodgy applications. Even when hackers do gain a foothold on a device, they're often stymied by iOS and Android's built-in security measures.
Perhaps more than any specific technique outlined here, the way to hack a smartphone is via sheer determination. "Attackers create highly repeatable and automated models that pick and pry at every angle of a mobile app or a new operating system version in hope of finding a weak point," explains Hank Schless, Senior Manager at Security Solutions at Lookout. "Once they find an exploitable weakness, they try to use it to their advantage as quickly as possible before a fix is released."
And if you can't figure out how to breach a cell phone, well, maybe you can find a friend who can help. "Information.sharing among cybercriminals most commonly occurs either on the dark web or in groups on encrypted chat platforms like Telegram," Schless says. "Larger groups, such as those backed by nation-states, are encouraged to share code and exploits amongst each other with the hope that collective efforts will help create more successful malicious campaigns." The good guys need to share intelligence too, because they clearly have their work cut out for them.