Virtually everything in today's time is connected now, from smart homes to online banking, and the most used link and medium for all of it is the smartphone. In the same vein, it's no coincidence that it's the easiest gateway for cybercriminals to use.
CBS News correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi for 60 Minutes goes deep in finding out just how susceptible mobile phones and networks are to hacks, getting in touch with German hacker and computer engineering degree holder from University of Virginia Karsten Nohl to get a clear look at things.
All phones are equal in terms of security, according to the expert. He continues to say that with just a number, anyone with enough skills can track the owner's location, spy on their calls and read their text messages.
Nohl says that hackers can do these by taking advantage of a security flaw in Signaling System Seven or SS7, a necessity for every phone to call and text other handsets. However, he notes that it's not what cyber intruders use most of the time.
To make it clear just how many people are likely to have a compromised phone, Lookout cofounder John Hering categorizes them simply into two.
"In today's world there's really only – two types of companies or two types of people which are those who have been hacked and realize it and those who have been hacked and haven't," he says, explaining that smartphones nowadays are "effectively a supercomputer" and that everything is hackable.
He continues to demonstrate how easy it is to access a phone's camera with a simple text message and an attachment, broadcasting video of the device through the eyes of its shooter even though the handset itself is not lit.
Meanwhile, cofounder and CTO of Duo Security Jon Oberheide says that the biggest, unfixable weakness is the human element, pointing out that people are gullible, install malicious applications and give up passwords every day.
To boil things down, anyone with the know-how can steal sensitive personal information, eavesdrop on conversations, spy via the phone's camera, track people or anything else along those lines without the owners even knowing about it.
The scary part is that malicious hackers only grow smarter by the day.
"We live in a world where we cannot trust the technology that we use," Hering says.
