Your Cell Phone is Stealing your Identity and Here is Why!

We live in an era where cellphones have gotten more powerful, so people are doing more with them. Tons of people without even thinking about it are doing Financial transactions on their cell phones. They are keeping contact info on there, Passwords stored in plain text, Even storing sensitive information like Credit card numbers, Social security numbers. So whats the big deal?

No its not the NSA snooping, its something called Near Field Communications (NFC) Attacks. Bluetooth and WiFi are the most popular services on cell phones that are used to communicate with Near Field Devices such has ear buds, card readers, mobile hot-spots and even the stereo in your car can be paired with your cell phone. This is a huge problem, although its a great convenience. Near Field Communication attacks are very common, and becoming even easier to do for the common un-trained unethical person.

There are literally devices you can buy right off the internet *cough amazon* that will exploit a cell phone that has Bluetooth or WiFi enabled and can SUCK the data right from the cell phone exploiting the Bluetooth and WiFi NFC. This happens a lot at concerts, Theme Parks, any where a large crowd of people will gather. This is a Data miners dream. These little device's can just be turned on and fitted with 20gb or more storage and fit right inside a pocket and all they have to do is walk around. If a phone is susceptible (most are) to the Near Field Communication attack and Bluetooth or WiFi is enabled on the phone well the attacker just grabbed everything he or she could from the phone.

Scammers, Carders, ID Thieves can literally leave a concert and come back with over a terabyte of data to analyze. Once one memory stick is full they simply slide in a new one. Some are even clever enough to pull all the info from the phone and literally clone it, so when you get a phone call, they get that same phone call and can listen in. Same goes for text messaging. This data is highly profitable as it can be resold on the black market.

So now that you know about NFC attacks with Bluetooth How can you prevent it? This is very simple, just disable Bluetooth and Wireless. Yes i said and Wireless. These devices can exploit your phone via Bluetooth and the WiFi connection. So if you know you are going to go somewhere where there will be a lot of people, take the extra precaution and disable your Bluetooth and WiFi.

How do i know if a NFC attack happened to me? You don't, your phone will not send some kind of alert or generate some sort of log file that you can look at, you wouldn't even know if your cell phone has been cloned.

My biased opinion on cellphones: Yes i have a smart phone and use it, but i only use it for, texting and phone calls. I don't download games onto my phone, I NEVER login or check anything financial on my phone. Especially threw a mobile network. Do you even realize how un-secure the connection is between your cell phone and the tower? I could do a whole article on just that....

I once had a client not to long ago come to me bragging about his new phone with facial recognition he shows it off and locks the phone, i took out my phone snapped a picture of his face, held it to his phone and what do ya know.... Unlocked :)

Be safe, Be Smart, don't be to paranoid just educate yourself before sacrificing convenience over security