The BBC freshly out of criticism over both the value of the tv license and the loss of significant quantities of equipment by incompetent staff have released an article on how easy it is to hack mobile phones. The topic may be exaggerated, as the reporter was doing it for journalistic purposes.
However the worry is that if a member of staff of the BBC can easily setup an ‘app’ that can log sensitive information to a third party, what could someone whom has a real malicious intent achieve?
It highlights the importance of app stores such as Google and Apple to act as a first line of security against malicious criminals. Both of these have recently removed apps which they believe had a malicious intent behind them.
They may see it as a much more lucrative revenue stream as they can setup premium rate numbers and have your phone silently call that number for ours on end and you wont find out about it until your monthly bill comes in. At that, it presumes you even look at your monthly bill, many providers are using online bills so unless you log in, you may not realise the problem until your direct debit fails.
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