Android malware creates 3D maps of rooms
Researchers have created a proof-of-concept Android malware app that is able to use the phone's sensors and camera to gather data that can be used to surreptitiously create a 3D model of a room. The research paperPDF from Robert Templeman of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Indiana and Zahid Rahman, David Crandall and Apu Kapadia of the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University discusses an Android app they created called PlaceRaider.
The PlaceRaider app makes opportunistic use of an Android device's camera to take photographs of a target's location. This information is complemented by data from the GPS, gyroscope and accelerometers to provide information on where the phone is in space. Then using that data, the researchers could reconstruct the target room as a three dimensional model. They emphasise that the taking of the photographs was entirely opportunistic so ideally would not be noticed by the target phone user.
