Snowden has plans for a device to monitor your iPhone's radios


Edward Snowden and Andrew "Bunnie" Huang announced Thursday plans for a hardware monitor for smartphones. The device would attach to the devices internal attends and watch for unexpected wireless traffic. The goal is to alert users that they phone may be transmitting sensitive information.

Wired:

Their add-on would appear to be little more than an external battery case with a small mono-color screen. But it would function as a kind of miniature, form-fitting oscilloscope: Tiny probe wires from that external device would snake into the iPhone's innards through its SIM-card slot to attach to test points on the phone's circuit board. (The SIM card itself would be moved to the case to offer that entry point.) Those wires would read the electrical signals to the two antennas in the phone that are used by its radios, including GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular modem. And by identifying the signals that transmit those different forms of radio information, the modified phone would warn you with alert messages or an audible alarm if its radios transmit anything when they're meant to be off.

The monitor they argue is saver than putting the phone into airplane mode as that too could be hacked. Plus, the phone could still be usable while monitoring activity.

This is certainly a sophisticated operational security solution, but still kind of cool.