NSA wanted to infect Android phones with malware via Play Store

The US Secret Service NSA had advanced plans to spy on Android phone users through a man-in-the-middle attack with Play Store links. That would appear from a document from the collection of whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA was investigating the possibility of manipulating packages between the Play Store or Samsung Apps store and Android phones in order to get malware on devices, The Intercept reports. Together with secret services from the so-called Five Eyes – in addition to the US also Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom – the NSA organized workshops to see how this could be done. It is unknown whether the secret service has applied the method.

One exploit on smartphones that the NSA has discovered is in UC Browser, a browser that is especially popular in certain Asian countries and that has been downloaded at least 120 million times in various variants, but has according to its own statement half a billion users. Data from the user who sent the browser to servers was easy to intercept, according to security researchers at Citizen Lab. UC Browser, part of e-commerce company Alibaba, has now closed the security holes.