Wireless Devices a Security Threat Overseas?

["Paul Ferguson" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

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Via WTOP.com.

[snip]

The intelligence community has expressed concern that when traveling to
some foreign countries with wireless communications devices, it's possible
your email may be read, your address book may be downloaded and your phone
calls may be monitored, WTOP has learned.

This is because when you fly overseas and turn your wireless phone back on
after the flight, it's no longer operating on your company's network --
it's linked to a foreign network.

Government hackers can open your address book and download all the
information. They can also listen to your phone calls. And according to
U.S. intelligence sources, one country has been known to try to infect
wireless devices with viruses.

When you get back to the U.S. and plug back into your company's network,
the intelligence agencies of those countries may have access to your
company's network.

[snip]

More:
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=251&sid=1345928

What a bunch of drivel.

I mean, come one. This has got to be one of the most creative
bits of fear-mongering and misinformation I have ever heard.

Can this somehow be an effort by U.S. Customs & Border Protection to
attempt to justify their searches & seizures of personal electronics?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/06/AR200802060
4763.html

If so, even more reason to sue DHS to halt this chicanery:

http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/02/07

Flabbergasting.


- - ferg

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--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


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