Hackers have developed a drone that can steal the contents of your smartphone -- from your location data to your shopping passwords -- by exploiting your phone's attempt to find wireless networks.

The technology equipped on the drone is known as Snoopy, and it looks for mobile devices with Wi-Fi settings turned on.

"Their phone will very noisily be shouting out the name of every network it's ever connected to," Sensepost security researcher Glenn Wilkinson said. "They'll be shouting out, 'Starbucks, are you there?...McDonald's Free Wi-Fi, are you there?"

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That's when Snoopy can swoop into action (and be its most devious, even more than the cartoon dog): the drone can send back a signal pretending to be networks you've connected to in the past. Devices two feet apart could both make connections with the quadcopter, each thinking it is a different, trusted Wi-Fi network. When the phones connect to the drone, Snoopy will intercept everything they send and receive.

"Your phone connects to me and then I can see all of your traffic," Wilkinson said. That includes sites you visit, credit card details, usernames, passwords and more. The drone uses a phone's unique identification number, or MAC address, to tie the detected traffic to the device.

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-- Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.