No need to upgrade: your phone needs only its microphone to pay for a taxi or join Lady Gaga's light show. But who else is whispering in its tiny ear?
IT WAS four years ago when Dragos Ruiu noticed that some of his computers were behaving bizarrely. First, software on a laptop changed unprompted. Then settings on other machines mysteriously altered – and data vanished. Most alarming of all, Ruiu claimed his computers seemed to be communicating with each other, even after he had severed every connection between them he could think of. It made no sense.
Ruiu, a respected information-security expert based in Edmonton, Canada, began to suspect that a powerful new computer virus was at work. Yet all efforts to find it failed. Then he discovered the only way to regain full control of a computer was to disconnect ...
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