It is dangerously easy to hack the world’s phones

Kevin Briggs, an official at America’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a regulator, earlier this year that there had been “numerous incidents of successful, unauthorised attempts” not only to steal location data and monitor voice and text messages in America, but also to deliver spyware (software that can take over a phone) and influence American voters from abroad via text messages. The comments were first reported recently by 404 Media, a website that covers technology.