Hacking on the hoof

Abstract

'Grey hat' apps are a new phenomenon in software that enable street hackers to delve into our smartphone and access our data, and more besides. Wireless analysis applications are plentiful across Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. Netstumbler, PRTG Network Monitor, and Wireshark all do the same sort of job. However, lugging around a laptop is not as easy as toting a slimline smartphone. Now the open nature of Google's Android, coupled with the immense portability of smartphones, has created a new genre of wireless apps that do everything the laptop applications do, but on a wider scale. Since the end of 2011, after the release of version 4.x and 5.x of the feature-rich Apple portable operating system known as iOS, a number of wireless analysis apps have started appearing on the iPhone and iPad platforms. Conspiracy theorists have attributed the arrival of interrogative Wi-Fi network apps for the Apple portable operating system platform to the passing of former CEO Steve Jobs; but it seems that the powerful upgrade of iOS 5.x in October 2011 has given programmers the ability to dive deep into the iPhone and iPad's innermost workings to launch a species of so-called Prosumer Interrogative Network (PIN) apps. Three of these new apps SharkforRoot (Android), SubNetlnsight (iOS) and Fing (Android and iOS) also differ from their desktop peers in covering several network analysis bases on an all-in-one basis. To use a Western movie analogy, these apps can be used for 'white hat' hacking and network analysis, as well as 'black hat' hacking and cyber criminality a development that marks a new cause for concern among the mobile security sector.