Hacker's New Tiny Spy Computer, "CreepyDOL system" Can Track And Destroy Your Privacy For About US$500

CreepyDOL is a new personal tracking system that allows a user to track, locate, and break into an individual's smartphone

Brendan O'Conner is an unabashed hacker who has worked for DARPA and taught at the US military's cybersecurity school. CreepyDOL is O’Connor’s latest addition to a surveillance setup he’s been developing for more than 18 months, integrating earlier research funded by small grants from the Pentagon research arm the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. CreepyDOL (Creepy Distributed Object Locator), his new personal tracking system, allows a user to track, locate, and break into an individual's smartphone. "For a few hundred dollars," he says, "I can track your every movement, activity, and interaction, until I find whatever it takes to blackmail you."

CreepyDOL is a network of sensors that communicates with a data-processing server. The sensor network runs on boxes about the size of a small external hard drive, with each node containing a Raspberry Pi Model A, two Wi-Fi adapters, and a USB hub. Previously developed by O'Connor, these are called F-BOMBs (Falling/Ballistically-launched Object that Makes Backdoors) and are sufficiently rugged to be thrown, or even dropped from a UAV. Each F-BOMB costs just over US$50, giving a network of 10 a price of around $500.

A CreepyDOL system of 10 F-BOMBS can destroy your privacy for about US$500

The F-BOMBS run software that allows the nodes to communicate with each other, as well as look for Wi-Fi traffic within its detection range. The nodes look for various forms of data, including Dropbox and iMessage data, that can provide information about the user of the smartphone. Some data only reveals that a particular protocol is being used by a particular user, while others may leak a great deal of personal information, including names, pictures, and email addresses. To stay within the law, O'Connor tested CreepyDOL with software settings that made the sensor nodes blind to any but his own smartphones.

All the acquired information is reported back to the data processor, which analyzes, organizes, and stores the personal data. The system includes the ability to display people moving around the area covered by the sensor network in real time.

“With these F-BOMBs, I can gain creepy identity information pretty easily and passively,” says O’Connor. ”I can track people over whole areas of a city just by tracking watching their wireless devices as they wander around.”

The impact of CreepyDOL is that it eliminates the idea of "blending into a crowd." If you're carrying a wireless device, CreepyDOL will see you, track your movements, and report home, even if you aren't using it.

People are not going to stop carrying about mobile devices, but O'Connor said, “If every person on the planet can use this surveillance technology, I think we should start to design things not to leak information at every level. You leave behind a trail that can be tracked not just by the NSA or a law enforcement agency, but by any kid in a basement with less than $500.”

"This is really going to get out of control, but it's the future," stated Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer for Veracode. "Everyone is going to be able to track anyone, unless there are regulations."

Curious about why O’Connor created CreepyDOL? He said, “At some level I’m doing this because it’s interesting. But I’m also doing it to prove that this level of knowledge and detail isn’t only the province of intelligence agencies anymore. If you think that only the government, with millions and billions to blow on watching someone can create this problem for privacy, then we’re not going to solve it.”

On the other hand, his security consultancy Malice Aforethought is selling F-BOMBS to the public.

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Write by: RC - Tuesday, August 6, 2013