Mobile security is still a fairly young practice, but it’s not unexplored. Over the past few years, there has been plenty of research on mobile threats, such as exploits, malicious applications, and more recently, drive-by downloads. However, there is at least one aspect of security that is lacking documentation, and that is the physical security of the device. One of Android’s great selling points, customization, is also one of its weakest in terms of security. While recent versions of Android support drive encryption, and even remote wipe, these defenses still can’t protect you from a physical attack that you didn’t even realize happened — especially if that phones other defenses have already been weakened by its owner.
And that’s exactly what this talk intend to do: teach you how to successfully conduct a “physical drive-by download” on a device; and in some cases, one that may only be accessible for a single minute.
Kyle ‘Kos’ Osborn specializes in network penetration, web application security, and mobile research. He plays a bad guy at the Western Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, and has developed a CTF, with his team, for the United States Cyber Challenge “Cyber Camps”, where a number of campers competed in. Osborn has previously discussed browser and mobile security at other conferences such as BlackHat USA, DefCon, Toorcon, ThotCon, and TakeDownCon.