State-Sponsored Hackers Targeting Mobile Devices, Former FBI Data Intercept Chief Says

State-sponsored hackers increasingly are launching attacks against mobile applications and operating systems as they look for new ways to infiltrate corporate networks and extract sensitive data, said Greg Kesner, the former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s data intercept program. “The mobile phone industry is certainly being attacked more heavily now in the US environment,” said Kesner, who now works at security consultancy Larson Security LLC.

New mobile operating systems from Apple and Google’s Android unit are prompting state-sponsored actors to take apart those new systems and write new code to infiltrate it. “It’s probably now more useful to get onto somebody’s mobile phone than their laptop,” he said. It gives hackers not only access to corporate networks and applications, but also personal contact lists, text messages. As more financial transactions happen on phones, that information may be more vulnerable as well.