Question

Just wondering, how the hackers in the movies are able to hack into cellphones without physical access to them... trace them and listen to call and read SMS ... so much mystery ... anyone who know anything in this stuff ??

Answer 1

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollywoodHacking

Movies often present egregiously unrealistic hacking scenarios, such as people using an Apple laptop to crack an alien mothership firewall and install a virus in the mothership's computer systems!

Your example is quite realistic, though; hackers are able to hack into cellphones and eavesdrop on data such as SMS through various security exploits, often discovered through reverse-engineering of the network system or cellphone. I'm no expert in this stuff, unfortunately :( do some googling and I'm sure you will find plenty resources on WiFi exploits and stuff.

Answer 2

You have now shattered my belief system....and ruined Independence Day for me:)

Answer 3

@ecdown: lol
@agdgdgdgwngo: Reverse engineering the phone would require physical access.
@aporvearyan: Most telephone hacking is done through a network exploit. Most of the cellphones around these days use wifi, just like a laptop. Therefore anytime you are accessing the Internet through wifi on your cellphone, you are open to the same type of exploits and hacking techniques that are used to hack a laptop. It's not really the computer per se being hacked, but the network. When you are connected through wifi you send packets through the air these packets are wide open to interception since there does not necessarily have to be a physical connection to the network, however, being connected to the network makes it easier. With all the open hotspots around this is usually not an issue.

Tracing calls and listening to conversations or attempting to sniff packets send over cell signals is an entirely different creature that I suspect would requires special equipment and knowledge. For example, I could right now sit down in Starbucks and do a little packet sniffing and pick up any packets sent to the router by anyone, including telephone users. However, that guy over there that is not connected to Starbucks wifi router who is accessing the Internet through the nearest AT&T 3G cell tower is completely invisible to me. I'm not saying that this could not be done, I just don't know how it is done nor do I know what equipment might be required.

I suppose one other way would be to have a fake website or something set up that the user with the phone connects to. If you knew the phones OS well enough, or knew of a specific security exploit, you could potentially hack the phone remotely through the website, but other than those methods I'm not aware of any special techniques or tricks to hack a cell phone without physical access to it.

Movies are movies. They entertain us no matter how unrealistic the scenario might be. Pretty much any of the hacking done in a movie is impossible, at least the way it is done on film. For example, someone using a special device that goes through all the possible permutations of a password to get access to a computer, security door, or whatever, and gets a result in seconds is ridiculous. It could take days weeks or years depending on the length of the code. This amazing feat happens because it creates action, drama, and 'coolness' for the audience and moves the story along. To illustrate this, my brother who is a flight medic used to get pissed off while watching this show called Trauma that was on TV a couple of years ago. The reason was that they would do and say things on the show that were not only unrealistic, but would kill the patient they were working on, but the whole thing was to create drama, no mater how unrealistic.