BBC experiments with smartphone cyber crime

The BBC has created a malicious smartphone app

The BBC has attempted to show how easy it is for cyber criminals to hack smartphones by creating its own malicious app.

The smartphone app was created using standard parts from the software toolkits that developers use to create programs for handsets.

The BBC says that its app was able to retrieve data from users’ phones, such as their contacts and text messages. It said it was also able to log the phone's location and send it to a specially created email address.

The broadcaster has in the past attempted to show how easy cyber crime is, when it purchased and experimented with a powerful botnet in March last year.

The company aimed to expose how cyber criminals operate, but the move was widely criticised as it gave the BBC control of thousands of infected computers around the world.