This drone can steal what's on your phone

[Musky]

The next threat to your privacy could be hovering over head while you walk down the street.

 

Hackers have developed a drone that can steal the contents of your smartphone -- from your location data to your Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) password -- and they've been testing it out in the skies of London. The research will be presented next week at the Black Hat Asia cybersecurity conference in Singapore.

 

The technology equipped on the drone, known as Snoopy, looks for mobile devices with Wi-Fi settings turned on.

 

Snoopy takes advantage of a feature built into all smartphones and tablets: When mobile devices try to connect to the Internet, they look for networks they've accessed in the past.

 

"Their phone will very noisily be shouting out the name of every network its ever connected to," Sensepost security researcher Glenn Wilkinson said. "They'll be shouting out, 'Starbucks, are you there?...McDonald's Free Wi-Fi, are you there?"

 

http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/20/technology/security/drone-phone/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

[perspective]

People already do this just by sitting in the local WiFi spot with their devices and programs. I guess the drone makes it a little more remote. If you're online, you just have to realize that someone out there can see what you're doing at just about any time, but some precautions can make it harder for them to do, like only connecting to private WiFi networks.