Lets Talk Bugs
Introduction: What Are Bugs?
When it comes to covert engagements, bugs are the tools of choice for gathering intelligence. These devices are designed to surreptitiously collect audio, video, or other data from a target environment without detection. Bugs come in many forms: HDMI man-in-the-middle (MitM) devices that intercept video streams, the versatile Hak5 suite (like the WiFi Pineapple or bash bunny, etc), and traditional listening devices that rely on radio frequencies. These tools allow penetration testers, intelligence operatives, and even malicious actors to infiltrate spaces and monitor activity discreetly.
Like all equipment, having them simply give your team options on the types of things you may be able to do during an engagement. The bug that I will be discussing in this post is something that everyone is both familiar with and likely already owns, the humble cell phone.
What Clients Really Care About
When you get hired to break into a facility and assess their physical security, paradoxically one of the biggest push backs during the sale that you are likely to encounter is a derivative of the client telling you
“We already know you can break into our building, so what would be the point?”
After all an idiot with a brick can get into most locations, so why should they care?
This is where you need to educate the client not on the ease of infiltration, but on what could happen as a direct result of it, because this is the part that client’s usually don’t fully understand.
There are many things that an attacker can do with physical access that would either be impossible or incredibly difficult through the internet. For example, as I wrote about here, a single attacker can take out power to an entire city with nothing more than a rifle, a little knowledge and physical access to a substation, something that even the best hackers in the world would find extremely challenging if not impossible.
Organizations spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars per year protecting their networks from cyber attack in the form of software licenses, employee salaries, etc, which all obviously have a high success rate given that most companies do not go permanently offline on an annual basis due to attack.
But a single attacker, with nothing more than a properly configured bash bunny with physical access to the right spot can bypass all of those expensive defenses. And this is why ensuring physical security is rather critical, and why clients typically focus on three questions for black teams:
What did your team accomplish after infiltration?
Did you steal data, disrupt systems, or gather intelligence that demonstrates vulnerability?Were you ever caught?
The hallmark of a successful engagement is operating undetected, ensuring that the client’s security gaps are exposed without alerting their staff.Did you achieve persistence?
Were you able to maintain access to the facility or systems for future exploitation, or was it a one-time breach? Was “the new hire” who was in the office for a few weeks actually one of your team members all along?
Why Cell Phones Make Exceptional Bugs
Old cell phones, especially once weaponzied, are an incredible asset in penetration testing. Here’s why:
Cost-Effective: Your phone doesn’t need to be the latest greatest model, instead Uuse older phones
Multifunctional: A single phone can act as a listening device, remote camera, linux computer, wifi hacking device, bash bunny or MitM tool.
Global Connectivity: With a SIM card, the phone can communicate across the globe, making it ideal for remote operations. Unlike wifi or bluetooth bugs, phones don’t require you to be within a certain proximity to communicate with them.
Stealthy Deployment: A cell phone’s small and slim size make it easy to hide. Further, if using the phone as a MiTM bug, the SIM card allows you to infiltrate or exfiltrate data via the cell network instead of the client’s own which makes detection significantly more difficult for defenders.
Reliability: Unlike many available bugs, phones tend to be pretty robust and reliable
Whether you decide to jailbreak your phone or use it in its default configuration is up to you, both have their pros and cons but phones really do give the attacker a lot of options.
Tricks for Deploying a Cell Phone as a Bug
In every one of these photos of conference tables above, what do you notice? In each one, and as is incredibly common today, they all have power outlets within the table and power outlets either built into them or near them. On top of that, they will also likely have a mess of power cords and cables running around underneath.
One of the simplest and most effective ways to use a cell phone as a bug is as a listening device in sensitive areas like VIP boardrooms. These spaces often have a rats nest of cables under conference tables as well as outlets, providing the perfect cover for discreet placement. Common deployment methods include:
Taping the phone to the underside of a table: This hides it from plain sight while keeping it close enough to capture clear audio. MAKE SURE YOU USE GOOD TAPE THAT YOU HAVE TESTED FOR ITS DURABILITY
Plugging the phone into an existing power outlet: This ensures the device has infinite power, eliminating the risk of a dead battery.
Hiding it behind other equipment: TVs, speakers, or cable management boxes are excellent camouflage.
Generally speaking if you decide to go this route, a few things you should remember to do are to:
Ensure it is set to silent mode
Vibration is turned off
The phone is set to auto answer phone calls (if you intend to call it), though there is a potential big security problem with this if someone else calls your phone.
For the third reason, I tend to jailbreak a phone and simply write my own stript so that the phone will call me at a specific time or when specific events are triggered.
If you want to be able to call into the phone, once again I simply jailbreak it and require a password to accept calls and only accept calls from a specific number that I own.
A Key Caveat: Data Control
Clients often have strict expectations regarding the handling of their sensitive data. As I mentioned in bullet point three above, imagen the horror on the client’s face if some random person called your phone and was listening into a sensitive meeting.
For this reason, using apps like Alfred (which turn phones into security cameras) is typically discouraged because these apps, and the data flow are not within your control. Meaning that whatever you have setup the phone to listen into, which arguably is going to be very sensitive, is flowing directly into the hands of someone else before it gets to you, which is a big NO!
Instead, all monitoring and data extraction should be performed using software that keeps the data fully under the penetration tester’s control, ensuring compliance with client policies and ethical standards.
Alternatively, if you have persistence into the building, you can simply have the phone, or other bug, record the data and then return later to collect it which bypasses this potential security risk, and is another reason why having persistence into a building is critical.
In fact, the number of times that one of my bugs has unexpectidly gone offline after being installed over the years is higher than I would like, and each required me to break back into the facility I just left in order to get it up and working again.
Real-World Example: Weaponizing a Phone
Here I am going to share with you a real world example of utilizing a weaponized phone as an audio bug.
Before the engagemnet, I had jailbroken the phone setting it up to record and call me at specific times which I would program into the phone later.
I was able to break into the building through a third story window by abusing the European tilt window bypass, the idea of which you can see in the promo video below.
Once inside the building I moved around getting my bearings, locating certain key locations and was even able to clone an employee badge that was left on a desk during lunchtime.
We wanted to place the phone inside the VIP conference room on the top floor but would need the schedule for VIP meetings. We could have simply left the phone listening and recording at all times, but this has its own problems of incredibly bloated file sizes and requires someone on our team to go through continuous audio files looking for meetings and not simple background noises it was picking up.
For this, we located and built some rapport with one of the VIP’s secrataries over the course of a day and scheduled a big flower bucay to be delivered to her at the office while one of my teammates brought and showed her the flowers, another got onto her teams account to quickly copy all VIP meeting times for the following two weeks.
Planting the phone was easy enough since, like many corporate environments, the VIP meeting room was neither locked or guarded in any way, which allowed us to plant the phone under the conference table and plug it directly into one of the free table sockets.
A tip for doing things like this in a busy office; do this with two teammates, which are on an active phone call together, one using the phone the other with an earpiece. Setup a series of code words that the team understands and have the teammate on the phone stand in the hallway on the call watching for anyone who may walk in and expose the second teammate (earpiece) while he is bugging the room.
An example of a code word setup may be anythin to do with cigarettes means you’re burned and get out, while “blanket” means to hide.
So for example, the conversation for telling the teammate who is inside the room to immediately get out might be,
”Hey did I leave my pack of cigarettes in your car?”
Mixed into an actual conversation, this bit will go unnoticed and doesn’t raise any suspicion, allowing your team to opening communicate even in the presence of employees or security. You can read more about the use and setup of using code words here.
Now with everything in place and the phone setup to call me every time the VIP conference room was scheduled to have a meeting, we simply left the building having accomplished what the client requested.
Conclusion
Weaponizing cell phones as bugs represents one of the most effective and reliable strategies for covert intelligence gathering. Remember that having equipment gives you options, so whether you choose to jailbreak a phone or leave it is up to you, and each has its pros and cons.
I would encourage you to consider learning about how to weaponize phones, what they can do and, if you have an old phone laying around, play with it and try to turn it into your own multipurpose bug.
Training Resources:
For individuals looking for a hands on training that includes all of the above topics, Covert Access Team (covertaccessteam.com) provides training courses focused on physical penetration testing, lockpicking, bypassing techniques, social engineering and other essential skills.
Covert Access Training - 5 day hands on course designed to train individuals and groups to become Covert Entry Specialists
Physical Audit Training - 2 day course on how to setup and run a physical security audit
Elicitation Toolbox Course - 2 day course of that primarily focuses on elicitation and social engineering as critical aspects of Black Teaming
Counter Elicitation - 2 day course on how to recognize and prevent elicitation attempts, and safegaurd your secrets.
Cyber Bootcamp for Black Teams - 2 day course designed explicitly for physical penetration testers who need vital cyber skills to add to their toolbox.
Private Instruction - Focused learning & training based on your needs .
Dang good article. Is 50 too late to learn to become a black team member? :) We can be very charming and nondescript.