Cops, Crooks Find Cell Phones Handy Tools
At a recent Infosecurity conference in New York, industry experts said businesses need to be aware of impending security threats by criminals to mobile devices used by their employees. “The cell phone will be the new hacker workstation,” said T-Mobile computer forensics investigator James Steele. “Except for the limitations of the browser, there’s nothing I can’t do over the wireless network, that I can’t do over a regular workstation.”
Steele said attackers are hard to find because wireless networks are designed to regularly assign and then reassign IP addresses. Companies are being urged to take control of mobile phone usage, specifically in sensitive areas, where corporate secrets may be photographed or downloaded to a telephone to combat the growing threat of corporate intellectual property theft via mobile phones.
More sophisticated hackers are using tools to examine cell phone memory and network traffic.
The good news is that cell phones do come in handy for law enforcement agencies that are using the devices to help solve crimes. “What I am seeing is a lot of the cell phones being used by victims to help identify the stalkers and attackers,” said Anthony Reyes of the High Tech Crime Industry Association.
Steele said he receives about two phone calls a week from police officers looking for help extracting evidence from mobile phones found at crime scenes.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the IDG News Service (12/09/05); McMillan, Robert .
