<p> <i> 12.19 pm </i> Can hackers track you using

 your phone battery?

Can your smartphone betray your location to potential spies with just its - surprise! - power consumption?

 

A technique developed by researchers at Stanford University and Israel’s defense research group Rafael suggests this could be the case, Wired.com reported.

 

But for now, the technique dubbed PowerSpy is very limited as it requires the prospective spy to be aware of the target's regular routes.

 

“You could install an application like Angry Birds that communicates over the network but doesn’t ask for any location permissions... It gathers information and sends it back to me to track you in real time, to understand what routes you’ve taken when you drove your car or to know exactly where you are on the route. And it does it all just by reading power consumption,” it quoted Yan Michalevski, one of the Stanford researchers, as saying.

 

Wired.com said the PowerSpy technique factors in battery use and environmental conditions and cell tower distance.

 

The researchers added they can measure the phone’s aggregate power consumption over time to determine the phone’s "location and movement.”

 

“If you take the same ride a couple of times, you’ll see a very clear signal profile and power profile... We show that those similarities are enough to recognize among several possible routes that you’re taking this route or that one, that you drove from Uptown to Downtown, for instance, and not from Uptown to Queens,” said Michalevsky.

 

Yet, the technique at least for now will require the would-be spy to determine beforehand the phone’s power use pattern as it travels along predetermined routes.

 

Thus, the data would be virtually useless to snoopers in areas he/she has never been.

 

The Wired.com report said the researchers used an Android-powered LG Nexus 4 handset for their study.

 

It said the researchers found they could identify the correct route - one of a possible seven - with 90 percent accuracy.

 

Meanwhile, Michalevsky said they are working to improve their analysis to expand the tracking to more possible paths and more phones.

 

He added PowerSpy may indicate a privacy problem for Google, as Android makes power consumption data available to all apps.

 

* not first time

 

Wired.com said this was not the first time this group of researchers used unexpected phone components to track users' sensitive information.

 

Last year, it said the group found it can use the phone's gyroscopes as crude microphones.</p>