Is your Smartphone compromised?

Most of the online attributes get stuck with these questions if any suspicious activity goes wrong with their devices. Yes, to be or not to be these smart devices can be hacked and of course, the malicious activity is persistent.

Hello Readers, I am Prinal talking about Mobile devices which are an essential part of our digital life. Being an engineer doesn’t mean that it will be a life of coding itself but also hardware configuration too. Previous blogs were on such activities which are digital platforms but this blog is more on Hardware devices and crimes which happen due to these digitals platforms.

Phishing/Smishing/Vishing: — These attacks are performed on basis of human manipulation. Like, phishing where suspicious mail is sent over to the victim, enhances their trust and gets work done. Likewise, Smishing is also a phishing attack over text messages or SMS. Now Vishing is also the king of social engineering attacks but more on phone calls, where they trick the victims saying that they are from banks or financial staff employees.

The most common type of attack these days is Smishing. Let’s look for some examples: -

- Financial Services Smishing

- Gift Smishing

- Invoice or Order Confirmation Smishing

- Customer Support Smishing

Another mobile cyber attack is somewhat outdated but still relies on if done perfectly i.e. SS7 Attack. This attack looks for security errors in SS7 protocol, compromises it, and intercepts voice as well as SMS communication over a cellular network. It’s like Man-In-The-Middle Attack where the attacker can listen or watch what you are sending the text messages or what you are talking about.

The most security feature used by users can be compromised by SS7 attacks. They can reset your WhatsApp, Facebook or Instagram, or any other social media platform.

These Smartphone’s however they can be reliable to use every single second but moreover, the attacks are happening on them. Other than SMS’s, phone calls are also getting tampered with. Like, Call Tampering, VoIP phishing calls, Man-In-The-Middle Attacks.

Not only phishing attacks, but also Unsecured Wifi, Network Spoofing, Data leakage through third-party apps, Broken Cryptography. These all are such attacks that are negligible by us but they also can cause severe damage to our devices.

When you connect to open wifi at any café or public place then the attacker forwards you with a link to connect the wifi using your credentials and then he can spoof all the details of your device persistently. It’s never been safe to connect the open wifi, if you are doing so then take a look for your precautions like not doing online transactions, not using your social media platforms or logging in on open wifi, not giving them access to a camera, or microphone which are not required.

To protect your smartphone devices it’s better to not get trapped by any spoof calls or messages. Never rely on public wifi and do online transactions.

This was about cyber attacks done on Mobile devices. Stay tuned for precautionary steps and how to report if such happens.