Gadgetory

President Trump is continuing to use an off-the-shelf Android phone a New York Times report on January 25th described aides trying and failing to replace Trump Samsung device and a string of tweaks in the days since have shown the president continuing to use Twitter for Android that's a huge security problem and a huge break from the norm finally this year they said good news mr. president we're going to give you a smartphone I get the thing and they're like well mr. president for security reasons it is a great phone state-of-the-art but it doesn't take pictures you can't text the phone doesn't work so basically it's like the three year old everyone was placed on when President Obama took office he got a specially secured blackberry with no apps no Twitter and just a handful of numbers that he could call or text the problem is any consumer grade phone running Twitter is vulnerable to thousands of attacks from all around the world and if that phone is in the president's pocket a lot of people are going to try to break in if they make it through they can turn the phone into a live microphone broadcasting everything you cheers back to the hacker to show you how that works we've connected with Zak lanyard director of research at silence he's going to plant some surveillance malware on our producer Tom's Galaxy s6 edge we tweeted Tama download link for what looks like the weather bug app but alongside the weather prediction Zack built in some surveillance malware that can turn on the phone's microphone and even the camera that lets us check in on Tom whenever we want you are at 40 point 704 a latitude is negative 74 oh one one three three one two so we're running Gabby honey when you got me over here they should be in the middle of a meeting yes you should be able to hear them talking what I'm going to eat this yummy oh I also can't make it tomorrow probably seven seconds of audio I've got their front camera and back camera full contact no SMS messages unfortunately or call it's true like we created we could have put more there to give you so here's what we got Tory are you okay yeah what Karen you daddy's right here nice very Duty for me that's been yeah I mean moron it's a little muffled because I think he was in his pocket or something but it was I mean it's perfect yeah you can work you got this right here you one name is very duty sister ah music okay let's move it fast is great what's the next week yeah it doesn't want to happen agree when do you guys want to finally stop I can't do it I can't do it next Monday I feel you guys have a today they can't do it next Monday unfortunately by the cameras why be half bed so this was just a demo that Zack put together in his spare time and the real thing would look different a couple ways we were relying on known vulnerabilities in Android so we had to trick Tom into purposefully downloading the software but when we see surveillance malware in the wild it's a lot sneak you using undiscovered vulnerabilities to break into an email attachment a bad link or even a silent software update it takes a lot of time and expertise to carry out an attack like that and for most users it's just not a plausible threat but the president is different foreign intelligence agencies are willing to spend millions of dollars and years of work to find out the president secrets right now some of the best hackers in the world are in rooms in Moscow in Beijing spending all day every day trying to hack into the Oval Office they take away here would be something to the effect of when you have an open ecosystem like that it's very hard to really universally maintain some kind of baseline procedure if they've done a good job but in the end it's it's hard because you have way more gates it's just not going to be something regular things so hmm which app older devices like s3 s4 even earlier is that five you don't and the fact that certain people in power have those that are more or less unsupported it's terrifying if there's an unsecured phone anywhere near the president those groups are going to find it and turn it into a microphone that was true for President Obama and it's true for President Trump the difference is it's so far Trump seems to care more about tweeting than protecting state secrets yeah actually amber Ashley Hamburg lol hamburger that real birth that is he works he used to work here and now he works with snapchat if he downloading it oh he's in the contacts of the phone no I mean we're going to we're going to call in the drones on that that's that's valuable information