A recent story on ABC’s Good Morning America describes one woman’s three year battle with a cyberstalker who secretly placed spy software on her cell phone.
At the time, Susan didn’t know that her ex-boyfriend installed spying software on her phone when she wasn’t looking. Once installed, he could be anywhere — even in a different state — and follow her every move. But what was worse, it didn’t just track her whereabouts. He could listen in on her phone calls, read her text messages and turn her personal cell phone into a bugging device. From anywhere, he could activate her speaker phone and listen to everything she was doing.
According to one security expert,
When somebody remotely activates your phone, you’re not going to know it and they can use that phone to monitor the conversations in the room you’re in…. Your phone could be sitting next to you while you are watching TV, and somebody can actually log into your phone and can actually watch what you are watching on television.
In this situation, obtaining a new phone number or carrier was not enough to stop the stalking, since the hardware itself had been infected with the malware. Only upon purchasing a new phone was the victim able to stop her cyberstalker.
According to the ABC report, the spy software used in this kind of attack is readily available online for $350, with basic versions going for as little as $50.
We’ve reported on new devices shipping with pre-installed malware 
A recent article on the 
Mobile broadband-connected consumer electronics devices — personal navigation devices, personal media players, eBook readers, mobile gaming devices and mobile digital cameras — are forecasted to reach 58 million total shipments in 2014. This is 55 times the amount shipped just six years prior.
Presented annually to the most impressive telecommunications start-ups in Silicon Valley, the SPIFFY Awards are judged by the members of the Service Provider Forum (SPiF) of the Telecom Council of Silicon Valley. This year the Council evaluated over 100 telecom companies and Mocana is honored to be among the final nominees.
President of the International Security Forum and former Microsoft Chief Information Security Officer Howard Schmidt has warned that the device security industry is not doing enough to secure the rapidly proliferating mobile device market.
“Jailbroken” iPhones — iPhones whose users have modified them to run otherwise unsupported code — are once again targets of a serious virus.
“Spying on BlackBerry users for Fun.”
Until recently, government employees were rarely issued mobile devices like mobile internet devices or Blackberry’s, usually because of the perceived security problem. That’s changing, and fast. More and more often, government IT departments have decided “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” and are rapidly outfitting their employees with commercial off-the-shelf mobile communications devices. These consumer devices, previously only issued to the highest-level government employees, are now much more likely to be found in the hands of the rank-and-file. That has dramatically expanded the government’s mobile device population (and its over-the-air data traffic), leading some experts to worry that sensitive government communications are becoming less, not more, secure.
The good news about 3G security is that today’s mobile broadband networks have some enhanced security built in. Most of the latest 3G technologies, including WiMax, at least have options for robust encryption. AT&T and T-Mobile provide High Speed Packet Access with a 128-bit Kasumi encryption algorithm. CDMA2000, offered by Sprint and Verizon, offers 128-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption.
