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Did you know your smartphone might be spying on you? Yep, companies or even spies could use it to map your home.
And guess what?
They might already be doing it. “We show how apps using GPS sensing can covertly capture semi-processed GPS data without consent and utilize it to discern the user’s ambience (99.6%) and activities (87%) across diverse settings, effectively jeopardizing privacy,” the study’s authors wrote in their paper published on the arxiv pre-print server. “At the moment, this vulnerability affects 90% of Android users.”
This means intelligence agencies like the NSA are likely aware of this flaw. “This is something an academic group can do. Intelligence agencies, my hunch is that they know it for sure,” said study co-author Smruti Sarangi of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. “In the world of security, if something is doable, rest assured someone is doing it.”
Think iPhone users are safe? Nope.
Researchers only tested Android devices but believe any device allowing app access to various GPS metrics would be vulnerable. According to New Scientist, Kevin Curran, Professor of Cyber Security at Ulster University, UK, stated that the only way to remain secure is not to have a smartphone.
“The fact that semi-processed GPS data can be used to sense the ambient, recognize human activity and figure out floor layouts was hitherto unknown,” the researchers wrote. “We successfully showed that all of the above can be achieved, and that too with a high accuracy that ranges from roughly 99.5% in controlled conditions to 87% in absolutely uncontrolled conditions.”
The researchers conducted experiments with many volunteers and different phones over a year across various locations. They even collected data on flights and cruise ships.
“Furthermore, our approach can construct floor maps with a maximum error margin of 4.1m as compared to the ground truth,” they added. “We can classify points of interest within an indoor layout such as elevators, stairs, corridors, empty corners and rooms with a roughly 90.15% accuracy, while just relying on GPS data.”
Currently, Android does not address this vulnerability, leaving approximately 90% of users exposed.
