JOHN MCAFEE ON THE PRIVACY PHONE: THE WHY AND HOW

by John McAfee

Thursday, April 27, 2017

We live in an age of self-delusion When it comes to our smart phones. They remind us of our appointments, remember the phone numbers of our contacts, locate restaurants. They universally facilitate what used to be the boring or tedious aspects of our lives. As a result, we subconsciously turn our attention away from anything that might cause us voluntarily to restrict the use of these devices.

As a result, the ill-intentioned members of society have taken advantage of this situation to a degree that threatens the very survival if our way of life.

The level of self-delusion is astonishing. Variety Magazine, at the end of 2016 published a story about a grad student who had just "discovered" that malware existed that could take over complete control of a phone by merely visiting a website containing that malware.

The writer at Variety wrote the story as if it was a "scoop" and that the story was the first to shed light on a terrible danger to smartphone users.

Yet, that very software "discovered" by the grad student had been legally and openly for sale by a legitimate software manufacturer for more than five years.

There are thousands of "gray area" software manufacturers that legally sell Spyware under the caveat that you agree not to use the spyware for illegal purposes. There are even companies that make a living by testing and reviewing these spyware systems.

Every self-respecting cyber security expert has known of this problem for years. Getting the rank and file users of smartphones to recognize it has been the problem.

Forgetting, for a moment, the problem of trying to wake up smart phone users, a person might ask how, in the first place, we got into the fix of technologically creating phones that could allow such spyware to operate.

The answer, in the minds of most security specialists, is that phone manufacturers have erroneously relied almost exclusively on software to provide privacy and security. Any hacker can explain the error in this thinking: All software will eventually be hacked. We are fighting software with software. As the balance forever shifts, we are statistically vulnerable half the time.

Here is an example:

Software engineers, many years ago, figured out how to power off a phone using software commands. It was cool and neat and thrilled the software community. Before long, every Smartphone manufacturer had incorporated this coolness into their phones. The hacker community was both salivating at the open invitation and rolling in the floor in laughter.

Why? Because if a software command is used to power down the phone, then that command can be intercepted by malware or spyware and the hacker then has control over when and if the phone is powered down. That means that spyware can intercept the software switch to turn the phone off. The Spyware then simulates a power down, ending with a blank screen. But the phone is still on and is spying. If you doubt this then read this article.

Eventually, every hackable function of smartphones was controlled by software switches, giving full access to hackers to control the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, geolocation, camera, microphone, the factory reset function, automatic system updates, etc. We have given the keys to the kingdom, blindly and willingly, to the world's hackers.

Pleas from the cybersecurity community to smartphone manufacturers to fix this this horrific problem by returning to the less "cool" air gapped physical switches have fallen on deaf ears. In desperation, I decided to do it myself.

The John McAfee privacy phone contains a bank of switches on the back cover that allow the user to physically disconnect the battery, the antennas for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and geolocation, the camera and microphone, etc. It also will not allow the phone to connect to a Stingray or any other IMSI catcher device. In addition, it contains a web search anonymizer to prevent web searches from triggering an avalanche of ads to buy T-shirts whenever a user does a web search for T-shirts.

It is version 1. It is not hack proof. But it does give the user enormous power over his or her privacy and it is light years ahead of the Blackphone or any other phone claiming to be secure. Version 2 will be available in early 2018. It will as hack proof as humanly possible.

To learn more about the Privacy Phone and secure a voucher to be first in line to receive one, visit mgtci.com before they're all gone.