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Android devices secretly logging SMS messages and keystrokes?

In an almost 20-minute video, Android security researcher, Trevor Eckhart shows how software by the mobile device tracker, Carrier IQ, logs each keystroke and then sends them off to unknown locations. When Eckhart tried to place a call, the Carrier IQ software recorded each number BEFORE the call was made!

Eckhart called the software by Carrier IQ (based in Mountain View, CA) a “rootkit,”since it has the ability to access device data while concealing its presence. (Coincidentally, Mountain View was/is the location of two of my past employers, Netscape and VeriSign [in roughly the same set of buildings!], and is also the home of Symantec [which purchased VeriSign’s security assets] and Google.)

Carrier IQ was offended by Eckhart’s claim and sent Eckhart a cease-and-desist letter and demanded an apology for the claim that the software is a rootkit. Carrier IQ said that the software is a “diagnostic tool” for companies to “improve the quality of the network, understand device issues, and ultimately improve the user experience.”

A few days later, Carrier IQ did some serious “backpedaling” after the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) responded to the cease-and-desist letter, saying that the research and comments of Eckhart are protected under the Copyright Act’s fair use provision. :-)

“Our action was misguided and we are deeply sorry for any concern or trouble that our letter may have caused Mr. Eckhart,” the company said in response to the EFF’s letter. “We sincerely appreciate and respect EFF’s work on his behalf, and share their commitment to protecting free speech in a rapidly changing technological world.”

CNET reports:

But Eckhart’s new video seems to refute at least some of those claims. In one part of the clip, he shows how an entire SMS message–“hello world”–was recorded by Carrier IQ’s software. In another example, he demonstrates how a Google search, his location, and other key information is recorded by Carrier IQ’s application, even though he was on Wi-Fi and a page secured by HTTPS.

“The Carrier IQ application is receiving not only HTTP strings directly from browser, but also HTTPs strings,” Eckhart wrote in a blog post. “HTTPs data is the only thing protecting much of the ‘secure’ Internet. Queries of what you search, HTTPs plain text login strings (yuck, but yes), even exact details of objects on page are shown in the JS/CSS/GIF files above–and can be seen going into the Carrier IQ application.”

Eckhart wrote:

“The Carrier IQ application is embedded so deeply in the device that it can’t be fully removed without rebuilding the phone from source code,” he says. “This is only possible for a user with advanced skills and a fully unlocked device. Even where a device is out of contract, there is no off switch to stop the application from gathering data.”

According to CNET, Carrier IQ’s software runs on 130 million devices worldwide, including those made by Nokia and Research in Motion, in addition to the Android devices studied by Eckhart.

Carrier IQ declined CNET’s request for comment.

What’s MY take on this? :-)

Some things in life require PROOF – like proving age discrimination in a lawsuit, for example. OTHER things in life require merely a knowledge of INTENT and the intelligence to see how parties who have EXPRESSED that intent would EXECUTE it. The EFF, of course, informed us about the illegal dragnet surveillance of the telecommunications of ordinary American citizens by the National Security Agency (NSA) in cooperation with AT&T, using whistleblower evidence obtained by former AT&T technician, Mark Klein. NSA obtained the information, “a complete copy of the internet traffic that AT&T receives – email, web browsing requests, and other electronic communications sent to or from the customers of AT&T’s WorldNet Internet service from people who use another internet service provider” via a “splitter” at at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco, California. Coincidentally, I was charged with taking an inventory of Sun equipment (IF any) at that facility, and ran into substantial difficulty in obtaining the information, until the inventory became less and less important to Sun Microsystems. :-) I never DID manage to get an inventory of the equipment (if any), and I did not find out about the NSA “tap” at Folsom Street until YEARS later, after I had left Sun.

If collecting all of that telecommunications traffic was important to the U.S. government back in 2001, why would we assume that it would be any LESS valuable now?

Also, we know that the CIA established the not-for-profit venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel “for the sole purpose of keeping the Central Intelligence Agency equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability.”

For me, the only PRACTICAL (not legal) question, since the government has obviously been aligned with telecommunications companies (and manufacturers) for years, is whether to USE the modern devices (with all of the implications) or to pursue the functional equivalent of life in “a small cabin in Montana!:-)

The legal questions will rage on for years (that’s what legal questions DO). Meanwhile we have to decide how we want to live our lives. We do not have to live our lives in ignorance nor in wishful thinking, however. We do not have to harbor any illusions.

And we do not require PROOF of things that are quite likely true, unless we plan to take legal action on them.

(Note added December 1, 2011 CNNMoney had this article about Carrier IQ today. Senator Al Franken of Minnesota sent a letter to Carrier IQ today demanding answers.)

-Bill at

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