The National Security Agency, America’s equivalent to Skynet, are at it again. Not content with data mining, illegally obtaining evidence and spying on its citizens, it has now been discovered that the agency also had plans to root spyware on various models of Android smartphones.
Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and exclusively revealed on The Intercept show that the project, named “Irrirant Horn”, involved hijacking the data connections to Samsung and Google app stores so that malicious software could be planted on the effected device. The agency would then use this to send misinformation and harvest data from targets.
It was supposedly developed by the “Five Eyes” umbrella network of intelligence agencies from across the world, including Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. This is in addition to the previously leaked documents by Snowden, which revealed that the Five Eyes alliance had designed spyware to target ‘leaky’ phone apps such as Angry Birds. The guys have certainly been busy.
The plan was discussed at meetings during the period of 2011 to 2012, with the reason motivated by concerns about “another arab spring”, aka. the spread of popular movements through the Middle East and North Africa. The intelligence agencies claim that were such an event to happen again, they need capable surveillance operations in place to monitor the situation.
The agencies were primarily interested in targeting developing countries, particularly those in the Africa region, while they also had eyes on France, Cuba, Morocco, Switzerland, Bahamas, the Netherlands and Russia.
The NSA, Samsung and Google are yet to comment.
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