International. Smartphones that sit at the center of modern life, with apps like digital wallets, becoming the preferred target of cyberattacks, according to security experts and hackers gathered at a conference in Las Vegas.
"We are entering the post-PC world," said researcher Stephen Ridley of the company Xipiter, when his team revealed to attendees of the famous Def Con hacker conference that recently ended in Las Vegas, that the same plague of attacks that personal computers have suffered can be transferred to mobile devices.
"I think phones are going to be the only new thing that people (hackers) are interested in visiting in the next five years or so," he concluded, warning that hackers' attention is being diverted to always-connected, highly data-laden devices found in people's pockets.
Along with information about friends' contact numbers and records of activities such as surfing the Internet, smartphones also have information about the location of their carriers that follow the trail of the places they have passed.
The use of smartphones as "wallets" will be common over the next decade, and they will largely replace credit and debit cards, according to a Pew Research Center report released in April. Some 65% of supporters and critics of the technology who responded to the center's survey agreed that these devices would be a widespread way to pay in 2020. Google last year launched a "Wallet" service that allows sophisticated phones that feature the Android operating system to use a "tap and pay" system to shop in stores.
Blackwing Intelligence security company researcher Eddie Lee showed those who attended the Def Con how to use an Android phone to capture data from a credit card and use the stolen information to make purchases with the electronic wallet.
"You can start spending using someone else's credit card; you can basically use it in the same way as Google Wallet," Lee said, demonstrating his technique in a room full of hackers. And he theorized that the tactic could work on other types of cards that use RFID technology, such as those used in transportation or building access systems.
NFC and RFID technologies for sharing data with nearby sensors are used in smartphones, credit cards, and even passports.
