Bow down to your new hacker overlords

Anonymous, move over. WikiLeaks, take a hike. There’s a new uber hacking/whistleblowing group in town with some serious game and a wicked cool name that’s putting you both to shame.

The Lords of Dharmaraja is the group behind the theft of Symantec’s Norton AntiVirus source code from India’s intelligence agencies. It’s also the group that claims to have broken into the servers of India’s embassy in Paris last summer. Now it’s released a bombshell memo that appears to document collusion between the world’s largest makers of smartphones and India’s spy services.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Cringely calls it for 2012; look out for the Facebook IPO, Apple HDTV, Armageddon, and more. | For a humorous take on the tech industry’s shenanigans, subscribe to Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter. | Get the latest insight on the tech news that matters from InfoWorld’s Tech Watch blog. ]

(In my next life, I want to be part of a hacker group with a name like the Lords of Dharmaraja. Just sayin’.)

Security researcher Chris Soghoian was poring over some of the government documents posted last month by the Lords and noticed a chilling detail: a reference to back doors built into phones made by RIM, Nokia, and Apple that appear to allow India’s spook community to spy on smartphone users at will.

Slashdot has a nice summary of the quid-pro-quo detailed in that memo.

The memo suggests that, “in exchange for the Indian market presence” mobile device manufacturers, including RIM, Nokia, and Apple (collectively defined in the document as “RINOA”) have agreed to provide back-door access on their devices. The Indian government then “utilized back doors provided by RINOA” to intercept internal emails of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a U.S. government body with a mandate to monitor, investigate, and report to Congress on “the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship” between the U.S. and China.

This isn’t totally surprising. RIM faced possible expulsion from the Indian market two years ago unless it consented to giving Indian authorities access to its encrypted email servers. At the time, one might have presumed that a democratically elected government such as India’s merely needed access for criminal searches — I guess that was giving the spooks too much credit.

Now the beloved iPhone has been dragged into this spy-versus-spy drama as well. We here in Cringeville are shocked — shocked, I tell you — to find out that Cupertino puts more value on profits than principles.

As with most leaks, it raises more questions than answers: What other smartphone makers provide back-door access to governments? What other U.S. agencies have been spied on? What other information has been leaked? What other governments have a backdoor into our smartphones?

Or maybe a smarter way to put that question would be, who doesn’t?

Got a leaky smartphone on your hands? Who is lord of the spies? Post your thoughts below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, “Bow down to your new hacker overlords,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Field blog, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter.