The NSA has the technology to turn your iPhone into an eavesdropping tool, revealed a well-known privacy advocate at a hacker conference in Germany on Monday. Journalist and security expert Jacob Appelbaum used his slot at the event to pull back the curtain on the National Security Agency's arsenal of high-tech spy gear including how it can use radar wave devices to harvest electronic information from computers, even if they aren't online.
A backdoor is a hidden remote access from an outside source to the device stock image pictured that enables the hacker to have almost full access with little detection. Even though in the past six months there have been an unprecedented level of public scrutiny of the NSA and its methods, Appelbaum's claims - supported by what appeared to be internal NSA slideshows - still caused a stir.
One of the slides described how the NSA can plant malicious software onto Apple's iPhone, giving American intelligence agents the ability to turn the popular smartphone into a pocket-sized spy. Appelbaum told hundreds of computer experts gathered at Hamburg's Chaos Communications Conference that his revelations about the NSA's capabilities 'are even worse than your worst nightmares'.
The investigation followed earlier reports of the NSA headquarters pictured spying on Apple products, which suggested a 'backdoor' in iOS could provide hackers with valuable information.
Apple said at the time that it had never worked with the NSA to deliberately weaken its products. The documents included in Appelbaum's presentation were first published by German magazine Der Spiegel on Sunday and revealed details about the undercover work carried out for the NSA by an elite team of hackers known as Tailored Access Operations TAO.
