OSINFO - Open Sources Information

A security researcher demonstrated a spyware program at the ShmooCon conference on Sunday that is capable of intercepting and recording text messages, emails, Web traffic and other data sent to and from BlackBerry devices.

Tyler Shields, a senior security researcher at Veracode, showed a demonstration of a program called txsBBSPY, which uses no vulnerabilities or exploits to do its work and is simply a legitimate application written for the BlackBerry. The application has the ability to access and dump the BlackBerry's contacts, email messages, phone logs, the device's current location and the recording made by the BlackBerry's microphone.

It also can continuously monitor both incoming anf outgoing SMS messages, monitor connected and disconnected calls and track the device's GPS coordinates in real time. The application supports a number of communication protocols, including HTTP, UDP, SMS and email, and can be controlled remotely via simple commands.

Shields has released the source code for txsBBSPY, as well as a slide deck with a detailed technical description of the application.

In a blog post on the Veracode site, Chris Eng says that it was unnecessary to try and plant txsBBSPY in the BlackBerry App World store, simply because BlackBerry users can install applications from anywhere, unlike iPhone users.

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