The US National Security Agency has set up a project in the past which attempted to infect users of the Google Play Store and Samsung App Store with spyware, according to documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden of late 2011 and early 2012 date.
According to the documents sought the NSA and British, Canadian, New Zealand and Australian intelligence agencies to find ways to attack smartphone users. Through the previously disclosed XKEYSCORE system smartphone traffic was identified.Through another project that had looked into development of the connection from the user to the aforementioned app stores was to hijack so that could then be controlled via a man-in-the-middle attack malignant "implants" to the smartphone .
In this way the intelligence services could monitor the target then. In addition to using the app stores as a springboard for the spread of spyware intelligence also sought ways to hijack them and spread misinformation among targets. Also wanted the intelligence to access the app store servers so that they could gather information about users, so notify the intercept and CBC News .
UC Browser
The documents also show that the intelligence services had discovered vulnerabilities in UC Browser, an immensely popular browser in Asia, and particularly China and India. Worldwide, 500 million people would use the program. The browser was found to leak all kinds of information over the phone. Information used by the intelligence services too. Canadian CitizenLab UC Browser has studied because the documents in April and discovered numerous vulnerabilities, which have now been remedied through an update. Google declined to comment on the findings and Samsung has given no substantive response.
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