Your mobile is vulnerable to hackers
Round-the-clock bid to remove wax after warehouse blaze
AS YOU tap away on your mobile, beware. You could be giving away your private banking details simply by the way you use your phone.
Hackers have found a way to extract information from every move we make with our phones, including how we type, tilt or even swipe, experts have found.
They can use our movements to guess a four-digit PIN with 70% accuracy on the first try and 100% by the fifth try.
They can even use the 25 sensors on many phones to access bank data and emails, Newcastle University researchers discovered. The hack requires malicious software to be downloaded on to a smartphone.
Information from the internal sensors is then collected.
Passwords can be guessed from patterns because we tend to use the same fingers and movements to type them. Most smartphones have accelerometers, which track tiny movements, and rotation sensors, which measure twisting.
They also have gyroscope sensors, which use gravity to track position and tilt of the handset. Personal fitness devices could theoretically be hacked in the same way, to find out where the user is and what they are doing.
Dr Maryam Mehrnezhad of Newcastle University said: “Most smartphones, tablets and other wearables are now equipped with a multitude of sensors. But because mobile apps and websites don’t need to ask permission to access most of them, malicious programmes can covertly listen in on your sensor data and use it to discover a wide range of sensitive information about you, such as phone call timing, physical activities and even your touch actions, PINs and passwords.”
She added that hackers could spy on any web pages opened on a phone, as long as the page hosting the malicious software was left open on another tab. Hackers can even access data when a phone is locked.
The Newcastle team found that each user creates patterns by clicking, scrolling, holding and tapping. With a known website, they could determine what part of the page the user was clicking on and what they were typing.
The team, who are publishing the findings in the International Journal of Information Security, warned tech companies, including Google and Apple, about the problem. Dr Mehrnezhad said no one had yet been able to come up with a solution. She said phone users could protect themselves by only using apps from approved stores and changing passwords regularly. – Daily Mail
THE EFFECTS of a threeday warehouse fire in Clairwood, Durban, continue to plague the area as a cleanup team tries to rid the uMhlatuzana Canal of wax. While Spill Tech, the emergency rapid response contractor, has been quiet on details of the clean-up operation, environmentalists are calling on the eThekwini municipality to test water samples to determine the impact on marine life.
A source closely linked to the operation said the clean-up was far from over and the company had two teams working around the clock.
During the massive warehouse fire last month, smoke engulfed the city.
A report on the matter is expected to be tabled at the municipality’s executive committee meeting.
Sister Cape Argus newspaper the Daily News last week reported on the concerns of the South Durban Basin community, which is surrounded by oil refineries, about the city’s alleged lack of an emergency response plan should a disaster strike.
The Clairwood Residents and Ratepayers Association said it had been worried “way before” the warehouse fire incident.
“During the recent fire, we sent out a message to our WhatsApp chat group, alerting our members to evacuate if the wind diverted smoke to their homes. Evacuate to where? We don’t know,” said association spokesperson Ravin Brijlal.
Adding to these concerns is the wax spillage from this fire. The wax is now in the canal, which flows into the uMhlatuzana River and into Durban harbour.
“There are two teams of about 30 working day and night shifts. If you look from Bayhead or Edwin Swales you can see the wax all the way down the river.
“That blaze resulted in material at the warehouse melting, and when the blaze was doused the heat was so intense that the melted material landed in the canal and river. It has since cooled down, hence the hard surface on top of the water.”
Brijlal said the wax covered a vast stretch of the canal and that it would take weeks for the cleanup to be completed. “There’s hundreds of tons of wax. It’s been about three weeks of cleaning already,” he said.
Spill Tech would not comment on the operation.
Gerald Carmody, the managing director, said he could not comment as he was away and referred questions to his colleague, Terence Fynn.
Fynn declined to comment, citing a confidentiality clause between his company and their client.
Rico Euripidou, groundWorkSA’s environmental researcher, said they were “more interested” in how the municipality handled the fire, which he said could have been prevented with adequate planning and strategies in place.
“We’re not convinced at all by their response to the incident.
“Do we know the levels of air pollution during the fire? Even the wax in the canal, the municipality should be able to take samples to check what environmental impact this has had on marine life,” Euripidou said.
Desmond D’Sa, of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, said the canal was the habitat of birds and fish.
“This has now been disturbed, and at some stage after the fire fish were found floating in the harbour. It would be interesting to know if tests were done to ascertain the dangers posed by the wax to marine life,” he said.