Vulnerabilities in GPS smartphone technology could let hackers map home interiors

Vulnerabilities in modern smartphone technology could make it possible for criminal hackers to map the inside of your home using GPS data processed by AI algorithms.

In one experiment, researchers used AI to decipher whether a person was standing in a room, sitting or even waving at the phone with up to 97 percent accuracy. This was achieved without a single camera used to provide visual or audio context.

GPS data is well known for containing longitude and latitude data in order to pinpoint where in the globe you are.

However, this is not the only information the technology stores. Over forty other metrics are included in GPS tracking to improve accuracy, such as signal to noise ratio and Doppler shift, a term describing the movement of a receiver relative to transmission waves to track motion activity. These additional metrics can provide a detailed presentation of an environment inaccessible by visual devices.

Research carried out by the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi showed that this type of GPS reconnaissance could determine whether a person was standing, sitting or lying down near their phone while readings were being taken, and in some instances even able to recognize actions such as waving at the phone.

Some experiments ran at near 97 percent accuracy, with detailed floor plans of rooms the phones were in. The implications for this are wide reaching considering the intimate settings that our mobile devices constantly reside in, never further than arm's reach within our homes. It is also possible that this technique is being used by companies to collect information to better serve their advertising, further raising privacy concerns for consumers of smartphones.

General security tips that smartphone users can implement to protect themselves include checking to see if their phone has suspiciously high data usage. This could indicate that additional signals and data transfer events are taking place maliciously and without the knowledge of the user.

It is also worth checking your call logs to see if malicious software is making your phone dial numbers with extortionate tariff rates. Persistent notifications or strange unrecognized apps should also trigger alarm bells, seemingly innocuous apps with hidden functionalities that may look like calculators or photo editors, downloading malware in secret. All this additional activity uses power, meaning that another tell tale sign of a compromised phone is phone battery life not lasting as long as usual.

Many people run malware scans on their computers to ensure their devices stay virus-free. The attitude towards mobile phone security across consumer demographics, however, is noticeably more lax. Increasingly automated trust in developer updates and more simplistic metadata interfaces mean that users are less likely to run routine scans on their phones to spot security issues. This is despite the fact that your mobile may be capable of offering criminals much more alarming real-time information than a hacked laptop.

The emergence of new criminal hacking techniques to extract data from our mobile phones is a cause for concern. The development of such resourceful technology, like all innovation, has the potential for misuse which must be anticipated.

Mobile GPS data can also be used in a more altruistic context and is necessary for a range of applications, for example, by helping emergency service workers locate victims within a building. By recognizing their location, what kind of room they may be entering as well as the person's body position, vital details for safe entry and medical information are available to rescuers in situations where cameras offer limited visibility. A major development in this field is the advent of vertical positioning, allowing rescuers to find out which floor a person is in a multistory fire or earthquake.

It is vital that regulation within the manufacturing process ensures that consumer privacy is protected with technical safeguards, and smartphone users are educated on the risks that come with the convenience of owning such devices.