Edward Snowden Says One Text Can Hack Smartphones

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Edward Snowden, the famous whistle blower of WikiLeaks, has made another revelation in an interview with the Panorama program that is featured on the BBC. Snowden, who has been living in Russia since 2013 on a temporary asylum, has claimed that the Government Communications Headquarters agency of Britain has been using a method to gain complete access of the phones of unassuming phone users.

The tool uses a simple text message which can be sent on the phones of the users. Although the message will not be displayed on their phones, it allows the agency to control those phones. The agency is then able to switch on the phone’s microphone and camera, allowing it to spy on the people using the phones. It also allows GCHQ access to the data on the phone.

The application used by the agency is called “Smurf Suite”, which is named after the famous cartoon characters. The applications were named “Nosey Smurf”, “Tracker Smurf” and “Dreamy Smurf”. Through WikiLeaks, Snowden has revealed several past secrets that involve government agencies spying on people. This revelation about the British agency, is just one of many such measures used by the government to control the lives of its own citizens.

The text messages sent by the British agency is an unauthorised method to infringe upon the lives of British citizens. The exploit allows GCHQ to remotely switch the phones on and off without the permission of the owners. Such instances are concerning. Governments across the world have cited that such measures are for the safety of the people. However, the reality is such exploits do not enhance the security of the citizens. To put it simply, governments primarily indulge in such activities in order to gain more power.


This Article (Edward Snowden Says One Text Can Hack Smartphones |Edward Snowden |) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.

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22 COMMENTS

    • Pretty sure that it does affect BB also. I remember my father telling me that the Belgian secret service is not allowed to use BB due to the amount of spying from the USA.

  1. What is so earth shattering or new about these revelations? He tells us we’re being spied on left, right and center and everyone is shocked? This has been happening for decades, its nothing new and it will continue to happen. Sitting in some undisclosed location, telling you so and so is doing this to you and that to you, what are you supposed to do about it? Can he offer a permanent solution? If not I fail to see any use of these so-called revelations because frankly its decades old news.

  2. “The famous whistleblower of WikiLeaks”

    that’s a laugh…. Thats Bradley Manning you’re thinking of. He is the “Famous
    Whistle-blower of Wikileaks”.They’re very different people And its not Julian Assange either just so you know. But Snowden doesn’t have anything to do with Wikileaks.

    • *She. And it’s Chelsea, not Bradley. Calling Chelsea “Bradley” is both EXTREMELY disrespectful and entirely INACCURATE.

      If you’re commenting on here, you obviously know that she’s trans. You do respect her, right?

      And don’t pull that “I respect him but he’s still not a woman” bullshit. Refusing to acknowledge her authentic gender means that you do NOT respect her AT ALL because you do not respect her identity.

      Why is it so fucking hard for you people to get it through your thick, fucking heads?? I mean is it so fucking hard to imagine that some people are born with body parts that don’t match their brains? Does it make you uncomfy-womfy? Does it chawwenge your sense of normalcy? Awe you scawed that you might hit on a twans woman onwy to find she had a penis? Awwwww, poow baby. GET OVER IT. SHE. IS. A. WOMAN. And her name is CHELSEA.

      • Um no he isnt you stupid mother fucker. And all you fucking idiots that support that mans “change” are whats wrong with society today. If you fucking faggots want to suck each other off and ass fuck each other then thats your business but the rest of us do not have to support or enable your asses asshole. So fuck off shithead. Last i checked the biological classification of males among a species is for those having dicks. And the way i understand it the little faggot was born with a dick. Male. Man. Whatever. Fuck off. I refuse to call Him her. Fuck that and fuck you.

    • Wow!.. Un blog qui expose les côtés obscure de notre sociéte et nous pousse a ouvrir les yeux pour nous rendre plus fort et conscients du mal de vivre qui nous habite pour certains… ça vous donne quoi de lire ça et de vouloir chercher les méchants coupables de vos malheurs? Si vous n’êtes pas capable de vous respecter les uns les autres pour si peu? Vous êtes le premier problème qui rend notre société faible et soumise.

      It’s time for you guys to learn and don’t forget why the world goes wrong.. ” divide and rule ” maybe you gonna find the clue in your heart. And stop trolling you for nothing. That’s the first step to a better world. Love your neighbour as yourself! And first of all.. love yourself!! Hope for us we’ll see the light before we all gonna die…

      Peace and love for all.

  3. yea the government been spying on us since day 1 its nothing new people just now finding out really people i thought people were smarter than this =_=

  4. Dearest Anonymous, If the NSA would just release the RSA factoring mechanism, so we can turn it into a massively power compression algorithm that would be awesome.
    Here’s how the compression algorithm works in a nut shell… You treat a file like it’s one big number. Then, you repeatedly factor the number to obtain all of the prime factors along with their exponents. Create another file that contains a list of all the prime numbers up to a certain point. We’ll go with every prime up to 2048 bit length. Now, record all of the exponents in a list (and be sure to compress large strings of zeros efficiently). For example, the string 3, 7, 0, 15 would represent 2^3*3^7*1*5^0*7^15. Every computer already has the large list of prime numbers. All you need to transmit over the internet would be 3, 7, 0, 15. Once the data gets to the person’s computer, simply start multiplying the numbers together.
    If you’re literate in mathematics/computer science, here’s how you improve the compression algorithm even more. Remember the string of 3,7,0,15. Re-run the string through the factoring machine. Now, you can transmit the an even smaller list of numbers… and you need to run the decompression algorithm two times to obtain the original file.
    Here are a few issues that you will face. If you repeatedly compress the file too many times, it will eventually hit a point where the file starts to become larger (which is a little weird, but trust me that’s how it works, especially when you have to remember to save the number of times you need to decompress the file.). I’d suggest running the compression algorithm, until the file size of the n+1 is greater than the nth iteration. Eventually, all you’re transmitting is the number of time the file needs to be decompressed and the nth list of prime exponents
    Another issue you will encounter is this… There will be a prime number so big that it is not in the list of primes stored on your computer. Here’s how I dealt with the problem. Simply cut the massive prime number in half. Now, re-run the compression algorithm on each half. Be sure to join the two halves together before decompressing the file.
    The factoring method is written in LabView… and obviously fairly important, because it renders any encryption based on factoring large semi-prime number obsolete, especially RSA.
    It can be written in other languages, too.
    Another cool thing about the factoring method itself is that it can be used to generate “super massive prime numbers,” which is pretty awesome. Originally, it was designed to output two factors of semi-prime numbers, so it needs to be tweaked a little bit.
    Oh… another idea… Instead of listing the number of times the decompression algorithm needs to run. You might want to do this instead. If you’re compressing a .iso file, record the number of times the last four characters translate to .iso, then stop decompressing.
    The first file that I factored was V for Vendetta. I got a semi-prime number over 10,000 bits long.
    Of course, it helped having access to several super computers. This may or may not be feasible on regular computers, especially the task of factoring the file, but it was a really cool experiment to run. I hope all of you will take screenshots of this little rant. It literally breaks the compression algorithm rating scale. Thanks for reading!!!
    Thanks for reading my little spiel. This is not a joke! It’s powerful and will completely render other compression algorithms obsolete! Lulz!!!

  5. Wow…
    This is a serious problem that requires some kind of solution and you close-minded cretins are arguing over someone’s gender? I am fairly certain that is an indictment of our entire species, that we can be divided over the most mundane and impertinent of subjects rather than uniting against the things that affect us all as a whole.

    I am very disappointed with all of you.

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