The National Security Agency planned to hijack Google and Samsung app stores to plant spying software on smartphones.
The report on the surveillance project, jointly published by The Intercept and CBC News Thursday, shows the U.S. and its “Five Eyes” alliance — Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia — were looking at ways to hack smartphones and snoop on users.
The pilot project, dubbed “IRRITANT HORN,” was to be a way to discover new ways to exploit smartphones for surveillance, according to the report.
Simply, the agencies would use the Internet spying system XKEYSCORE to browse smartphone users’ Internet traffic. Then, they would use the data to track down smartphone connections to app marketplaces operated by Google and Samsung. Once connected, the agents could hijack that connection to the app marketplace and plant spyware on the smartphone.
The spyware could then gather data without the smartphone user noticing, including emails, texts, web history, call records, videos, photos and other files.
Agencies also were looking into ways to send “selective misinformation to the targets’ handsets” as a way to confuse a combatant.
Google declined to comment; Samsung said it would not be commenting “at this time.”
