Firm warns of hacker threat to smartphones

Cyber security veterans behind startup CrowdStrike will demonstrate at the RSA conference on Wednesday that the types of attacks used against computers are heading for smartphones.

Cyber security veterans behind startup CrowdStrike will demonstrate at the RSA conference on Wednesday that the types of attacks used against computers are heading for smartphones.

Former McAfee chief technical officer George Kurtz and Dmitri Alperovitch have figured out how to take over smartphones using booby-trapped text messages.

'The reality is that those attacks are probably already in the wild and no one has discovered them,' Alperovitch, the author of reports on cyberespionage operations Aurora, Night Dragon, and Shady Rat said. Hackers could send a text message worded like a warning from the telecom service provider that the account will be cancelled if the smartphone user doesn't click an enclosed link to resolve the matter.