China reportedly spying on 'tens of thousands' of Americans via cellphones
China reportedly spying on 'tens of thousands' of Americans via cellphones
Prc has been using telephone companies in the Bahamas and Barbados to spy on "tens of thousands" of American citizens, a mobile-telephone security expert told Great britain's Guardian newspaper.
"The attacks qualify as mass surveillance, which is primarily for intelligence collection and not necessarily targeting high-contour targets," said Gary Miller, founder of Exigent Media, a Seattle-surface area media-product company specializing in cybersecurity issues. "These occur primarily while people are [traveling] abroad."
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The Guardian article does non get into technical details, only a 2-part written report entitled "Far from Home" posted on the Exigent Media website makes clear that Miller is talking about abuses of the Signaling Organization seven (SS7) telephone-signaling network and its successor, the Diameter signaling protocol.
The report details "a comprehensive vision into foreign surveillance attacks and cyber espionage threat activeness against U.S. mobile phones."
"No one in the [telecommunications] industry wants the public to know the severity of ongoing surveillance attacks," Miller, who spent a decade in the mobile-security industry, told the Guardian. "I want the public to know about it."
Exploiting SS7 to spy on users
The SS7 system allows landlines and mobile phones anywhere in the globe to observe, dial and ship text letters to each other by creating a shared interface amongst the hundreds of independent phone companies worldwide.
Considering calls placed to mobile phones need to geographically locate the phones before establishing a vocalisation connection, SS7 tin can be used to detect mobile-phone owners and rail their movements.
SS7 can also be abused to silently forward calls and text messages to other numbers without the intended recipient's knowledge, making it a powerful if unintentional surveillance tool.
Access to SS7 is supposed to exist strictly controlled, merely many state-endemic telecoms must comply with the demands of authoritarian governments, and some telecoms in small or poor countries may be tricked or cajoled into providing admission to 3rd parties.
"Mobile networks send millions of attack messages on a monthly ground," Part 1 of Exigent'south Far from Habitation report, covering 2018 and 2019, says. "Massive volumes of cyber espionage activity have occurred for years and continues to this day."
Nosotros'd normally tell you how to protect yourself from this kind of attack, but the fact is that SS7, Diameter and similar protocols are built right into the telephone network itself. They're what makes calls between people using different phone carriers possible.
The only way to avert existence tracked via your mobile phone is to plough it off and take out the battery. If you tin't remove the battery, then put information technology in a Faraday bag or, as in the 1998 movie "Enemy of the State," an empty metallic-foil potato-chip bag. (Russian information-security firm Kaspersky says the two-bag method works best.)
The Caribbean connection
The Exigent report says that while many countries, including many U.S. allies, and even some organized-crime groups, apply SS7 to passively track individuals, Chinese attackers are actively manipulating the SS7 communications on the mobile phones of Americans traveling outside the U.S. to improve harvest calls and text messages.
Miller said most of the agile SS7 surveillance he observed in 2018 — 85%, according to the Far from Home written report — was facilitated through China Unicom, one of three state-owned telephone service providers in mainland China.
But he told the Guardian that in 2019, a much larger share of Chinese SS7 action was made possible via two telephone companies in the Americas: Cable & Wireless on the Caribbean island of Barbados, operating under the brand name Menses, and the Bahama islands Telecommunications Visitor (BTC), a articulation venture betwixt Cablevision & Wireless and the Bahamian government.
Cablevision & Wireless is an American-owned British company with operations in Miami. Contacted by Tom'southward Guide, a Cable & Wireless spokesperson provided the post-obit statement.
"Beyond all the markets where Cable & Wireless Communications and Menstruum operate, including The Bahamas, we continuously monitor our networks and have robust security policies and protocols in place to protect the data of our customers. We take our delivery to information protection seriously and are carefully reviewing the information in the Guardian article."
Telecoms in the English language-speaking Caribbean and the Commonwealth of the bahamas are function of the same telephone-numbering and dialing system equally phone companies in the U.S. and Canada, making them useful to strange spies targeting the U.Southward.
Americans calling people in the English-speaking Caribbean, and vice versa, do not need to prefix calls with the "011" international-call prefix. They instead can dial the numbers similar any other number in the U.S. or Canada.
Telecoms may non know they're being abused
The Exigent written report implies that telecoms such as Cablevision & Wireless and the Commonwealth of the bahamas Telecommunications Company may non be aware of possible abuse of their networks by strange entities.
"In remote island countries and developing nations, it is common for the network operator in those countries to sell the apply of its network by leasing a network address called an SS7 Global Championship (GT)," the report says.
"Through the use of a network connexion and a foreign operator's GT accost, the threat thespian tin can access any network to which that operator has a roaming agreement."
A split Guardian story published the day later on its written report on Miller'due south findings detailed how a telecom on Guernsey, one of the British Channel Islands, had been abused by an Israeli private-intelligence firm to proceeds access to the SS7 network for purposes of surveillance.
The Aqueduct Islands are tiny quasi-contained islands off the northern coast of France that fall under the jurisdiction of the British monarch just are not part of the U.k..
Exigent's written report besides details corruption of the SS7 and Diameter systems involving telecom operators in United mexican states, Canada, Russia, the European Union, the Palestinian territories, Switzerland, Hong Kong and several African countries, too every bit in other islands and territories in the English-speaking Caribbean.
"The implications associated with active mobile network surveillance threats in 2020 should be seen as a troubling sign for U.Due south. mobile network operators and U.South. policymakers in the future," concludes Part 2 of Exigent's Far from Dwelling house report.
"While vulnerabilities are very well known within the mobile operator manufacture and amidst U.Southward. policymakers, there has been niggling action to restrict foreign surveillance action."
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/china-us-ss7-phone-surveillance
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