Have you ever had any ideas on how #PokemonGo got so huge popularity, can you be sure that it'll always be used as intended? It's not a secret that this game is backed by #Google, one of the dominant companies in internet market.
There are tons of publicly available information that proves close cooperation between google and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). At least it worth to read INSURGE INTELLIGENCE report, that tells how intelligence community funded, nurtured and incubated #Google as part of a drive to dominate the world through control of information. Seed-funded by the NSA and CIA, Google was merely the first among a plethora of private sector start-ups co-opted by US intelligence to retain ‘information superiority.’ These data can be easily "googled", so I will drill down.
#Niantic, Inc was founded by John Hanke who also established Keyhole, Inc. - project for Earth mapping, acquired by the same Google. Google maps, Google Earth, Google-Streets were created on the basis of Keyhole technologies. Now, watch the hands! Keyhole, Inc was co-sponsored by a venture capital Fund In-Q-Tel, officially established as a division of CIA in 1999. This fund invests in high-tech companies for the sole purpose of keeping the Central Intelligence Agency equipped with the latest information #technologies.
Thus using developments of keyhole, Google solved urgent problems of continuous terrain mapping, including roads, bases, etc. (sometime even kilometer-resolution maps used to be considered as strategic and confidential...). Google Street cars-robots are looking through all over the alleys, cars, faces, they are recording our cities... However, there is one problem. How to peek into our homes, basements, tree-lined avenues, barracks, a Federal office and so on, down the list?
And guess what?
The same old Google and Niantic Labs released genius viral toy, the latest technology of augmented reality. As soon as you download the app and give it the appropriate privileges (access to camera, microphone, gyroscope, GPS, connected devices, including the USB, etc.), your phone immediately will vibrate, informing you about the presence of the first three #pokémon! (The first three always appear immediately and nearby). The game requires to shoot them on every side, happily rewarding you with the first achievement, but at the same time it gets a photo of the room where you are, including position and attitude of the phone. Congratulations to you! You have just taken a picture of your apartment! Want me to explain further?
By the way, installing the game you agree to the terms of Service, which are barely simple. Niantic officially warns: "We may also consult and cooperate with law enforcement authorities to prosecute users who violate the law".
We may disclose to them any information about you or your child...
But who ever reads this extensive legal text?
Meanwhile, the terms also claim: "our program is not able to fulfill "Do not track" query of your browser, so it watched and will keep watching you!
Projects total awareness was launched by the CIA in the early 2000-ies. Game Pokemon Go is a new step in the development of the information-gathering system. It not only can collect the necessary information about the objects and people but also manipulate their minds. These games actually are able to mix up fiction and reality in human minds. According to its evolution, it will be able to send commands of total submission to specific person.
So, additionally to voluntary and joyful mapping of everything around, another fun opportunity has opened up. For example, you want someone you know to find out what is going on in the building (what's about State Duma?), and dozens phones of deputies, cleaners, journalists are vibrating : "Pikachu is next to you!!!". And happy citizens will get their smartphones, activating cameras, microphones, GPS, gyroscopes and spun in place, staring at the screen loading data channels by terabytes of video stream... Bingo! The world has changed.
Welcome to a new era of Covert Surveillance!
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Alex Smirnov
This post is a continuation of my story "THOUGHTS on Real Purposes of PokemonGo or Why This Game is a Dangerous Weapon of 21st Century!"
I should also add that you cant really play the game from inside. Unless your incredibly lucky and near a pokestop or something.
The CIA has done crazier things before! This raises some good points. I am following your posts on security.
Thanks, mate.
Stay tuned
When the hell did hardcore criminals start playing Pokemon. Spy on who? 12 year old criminals.
It's more about data collection...
Their 12 year old childs can reveal all the information about drugs or whatever else in their house
Or maybe it just a fun game invented by a company trting to make money.
I think that's the last thing on the agenda. Revenue will flow for sure but @phenom is on the money in his own way. You don't have or need to be paranoid to realise we're deeply embedded in an Orwellian reality.
hahaha :D
it`s very cool!! :D
Блин убило! Его точно гена нашел, именно так!!
possible... :D
I'm going to copy my previous comment again, adding some new points.
First of all, i would like to mention that implementing malware in videogames is a risky thing. Here's why: Pokemon Go is still not supported in many countries, so those Android users who want to play Pokemon Go, need to download APK instead of searching it in Google Play. It appears that one of the most popular APK files contained some malware in it. That was exposed by some users on Reddit and other forums just days after the release. It's very easy to loose users trust in 2016, remember how Windows 10 and data mining was exposed?
If there really was a backdoor in Pokemon GO code, that would allow the potential "bad person" to spy on users, using this app, then, it would have been already found. Thousands of coders, game hackers (the people that use their skills to obtain boosts in games), developers that want to make another game clone - they would share this with the people, as it would be a potential app destroyer, so they would be able to make their own clones and have all the profits possible.
Also, it's silly. Why would people from spy agencies develop a game, based on a setting, that costs billions of USD, instead of negotiating the possible backdoor in the OS. People don't catch Pokemons 24/7. People don't use the app 24/7 Yeah, i know about youth and kids, but if we are talking about some Gov people...
You can also play without using the camera. AR is just an option.
In my opinion, these kind of theories (about applications) should be always backed with code/data control logs that prove the statements.
And if there was an idea of forcing you to be in needed locations in-game, developers wouldn't have made Lure Modules and Incense :) These items attract Pokémon to you.
Terms of Service clearly say: We may also consult and cooperate with law enforcement authorities to prosecute users who violate the law. Are you going to violate the law using Pokemon GO? It's fucking hilarious. And i advise you to check the Terms of Service of websites or apps you're using, because any company which goes by the word of law has something like this in their ToS. There is no "HOLY SHIT DUDES WE ARE WATCHING YOU" or something in that kind.
Pokemon GO has been recently unbundled. I'm too lazy to edit, here is the Steemit post:
https://steemit.com/pokemongo/@miohtama/reverse-engineering-pokemon-go-on-android
Here's the article:
https://applidium.com/en/news/unbundling_pokemon_go/
Now the main question: if you make an app which is a spying app, would you let the possibility of RE exist? Of course no.
That's the thing i told you in my previous comment - if any data leaks or hidden spying tools existed in Pokemon GO - they would have been already found.
The concern is not about "malware," per se, embedded in the app, but that the app is harvesting valuable data and shipping it off to Google for who knows what. The point is that the user would never notice malicious behavior because, to most users, it wouldn't be considered malicious at all. So the app took some pictures and sent them to Google; big deal! Most likely that code is in there somewhere, and your average person will know exactly what it's doing and not think twice about it.
And Google isn't stupid; if they want to hide something (which again, they probably don't), the dumbest thing they could possibly do is obfuscate the bytecode. That sets off red flags and alarms everywhere, and suddenly there's thousands of skilled RE's analyzing the app (a lot of them just for the challenge, which is far more compelling with a big name like Google involved), whereas right now all we have is the occasional tech blog doing a cursory overview (which is all your link is, btw). Also, there's far better ways to hide code than blanket obfuscation. Like I said, that's probably the worst way to do it. And no, there's no way to prevent reverse engineering of an app. It's impossible in practice, and I've actually worked on the theoretical side of that, and while I don't have a formal proof that it's impossible, I'm pretty darn sure it is.
The point of the OP isn't that it might be malicious in the traditional sense; it's that the CIA may be involved, and if they are, they'll be scooping up massive swaths of data (and again, the code involved here will be completely ignored by most any reverse engineer because it's completely mundane: uploading a picture) and we have no idea what they'll use that data for.
Thanks, @modprobe. That's exactly what I wanted to say.
Massive volumes of data are sent to servers and nobody can find out and check how the data are really used. Whether it's used by CIA or just for app analytics. And even if it's not used by CIA at the moment nobody can guarantee that it won't be used by them futher!
It's still not what everybody are talking about (photo/video recording). The amount of data which can probably be sent to somebody is not bigger as it would be if you used your Google or Apple maps.
The code is there somewhere is not actually an answer. It should be there or all the theories are just attempts to gather some attention. And there are not only thousands of REs, as I've mentioned, the code was explored by the game hackers and clone makers too.
And yes, you can check the amount of data that the game sends. It will require an android device, some services disabled, some tools installed.
It's very interesting to look at this from nonstandart point of view, but it all looks very unnaturally. I have read some article that cites a number of possible models for the description of a large conspiracy. they plotted dependence of the number of participants in the conspiracy and mathematical expectation of secrete disclosure time. with 10 participants period expiration was about ten years
good post @phenom !
Well, I can understand the privacy issues this would cause but I work 9-5, so if law enforcement really wanted to know where I was its quite simple. Not everyone is on Pokemon so using it like batmans phone sonar device would only get a chunk of the population, let online people who uninstall it and get bored.
I believe that certain agencies have corrupt individuals and that in order to truely find out their movites and the developers , most applications should be open source. Would be great in getting peoples opinion on what uses for agencies to have all this data? Cheers for the post!
Very interesting. This is why I keep as much of my data out of the hands of private companies, and if it's public data, well, there are other means for that.
Another thought provoking post, we are becoming too complacent with our security and viral memes
I'll just take this moment to paraphrase Rammstein...
"We're all working for the CIA, the CIA, hip hip hooray"
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