Article

2014-09-04 -Land of the Free

Mysterious Fake Mobile Phone Towers Are Intercepting Calls All Over The U.S.

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Posted by Besoeker 2014-09-04 00:00|| || Front Page|| [5 views ] Top

#1 Customer: Dude my Phone's not workimg, just says "searching"

SmartPhone rep: are you in a good cellular coverage area? how many bars?

Customer: Dude I am standing right next to a tower wtf!!!

SmartPhone rep: uuuuumm.....have you tried restoring your phone...???

Posted by Bov Flimbers 2014-09-04 03:41|| 2014-09-04 03:41|| Front Page Top

#2 Note to Bov, the particular hue of yellow highlight above is reserved for guest posters, in this case the tireless and oddly knowledgeable Besoeker. Similar in hue to Fred proprietary yellow, but lacking in chroma and a bit more cyan.

Posted by Shipman 2014-09-04 07:32|| 2014-09-04 07:32|| Front Page Top

#3 The small Stingray units are down to the size of a large paperback book now. The tech's can now walk through a complex or building and 'chase' a phone down to a 10 meter locale, with the GPS off.

Posted by ed in texas 2014-09-04 07:40|| 2014-09-04 07:40|| Front Page Top

#4 Got $3500 bucks for a spy-resistant cell phone? and more Here.

Posted by JohnQC 2014-09-04 09:50|| 2014-09-04 09:50|| Front Page Top

#5 ed - before GPS in phones we could do better than that at "Batwings" but the spooks would never listen when we tried to tell them how because they told us they were smarter then us and knew it all.

The secret is the power strength measurement off the pilot beams. (for CDMA) A phone is constantly making these looking at many many pilots (each carrier sector base has at least one) . So with PSMs from over 17(normal min) pilots you can triangulate pretty damn well. Also if they are in a call the call detail logs (infrastructure side) show constant measurements for each leg of a call because the phone needs to decide when to do it's spiderwalk of soft, softer or hard handoffs (hard is a good way to drop a call) The phone constantly gives its measurements to potential hand-in sites as one moves about in in a call. You have to know pretty damn well where the phone is to make the call work in the first place since you are punching in on your Walsh Code at the precise time to not interfere with others and that requires knowledge of exact distance to the base/carrier/sector transmitter. For that reason all base stations have a GPS with time because every phone needs to know the exact time too. Prior to GPS in the phone they derived position only from the time signal in each of the pilots. Way before GPS we could calculate it down to inches.

Further CDMA background - in CDMA it is normal to be connected to more than one base/carrier/sector transceiver at a time. You then do a spiderwalk of moving one leg of the call while keeping the others. If you are a normal customer your call typically has 3 legs. If you are a discerning customer and pay through the nose your call can have N-legs where N is directly related to $. If you are GSM tough titties it's not that elegant so you drop a lot.

Posted by 3dc 2014-09-04 10:26|| 2014-09-04 10:26|| Front Page Top

#6 Also, if any side of a cellphone conversation has the receiver and transmitter in the same hard-case you can kiss the native encryption goodbye.
That's because one side of the base is easy to decrypt and you can crack the otherside by sonic feedback through the case making an echo of the message visible in the more encrypted side of the conversation. This provides enough of a hint to crack the encryption. (use hands free stuff on both sides) That said a good portion of a call can be recovered from the call detail log even if it wasn't one of the random calls sent to the FBI under CALEA. (oh and the FBI is entitled to all data under CALEA from every phone)

Posted by 3dc 2014-09-04 10:35|| 2014-09-04 10:35|| Front Page Top

#7 Also, unless turned off or the battery removed, your phone periodically tells the system where it is so the system can know where to ring an incoming call or send a text. So your position is always noted if a phone is on.

Posted by 3dc 2014-09-04 10:41|| 2014-09-04 10:41|| Front Page Top

#8 Interesting 3dc. It's amazing what you can learn at Rantburg U. Thanks!

Posted by CrazyFool 2014-09-04 10:52|| 2014-09-04 10:52|| Front Page Top

#9 Kerry Patton - NSA (Signals Intelligence) for Dummies: BLUF: Generally speaking, if it emits a signal or can be pinged, your communications and location are potentially at risk.

Posted by Besoeker 2014-09-04 10:55|| 2014-09-04 10:55|| Front Page Top

#10 CrazyFool, some auto companies have been known to embed cellphones into engine computers and other devices for delivering actual use engineering statistics to the company. Unless you can sniff for it you would never know it's there. They know who owns the car (DMV registration) so if you have one of those autos your auto's position is always known.

The pressure sensor in your tires is announcing itself to EPA sensors on the roads and highways. It has enough info to know the exact serial number of the tire so you can be tracked that way.
At one point some idiots at EPA (Clinton era) wanted the ability to remotely shut your car down if it didn't have proper tire inflation with only the EPA able to revive it. Imagine the accidents when the EPA shut you down on the inside lane at 80mph in heavy traffic.

Posted by 3dc 2014-09-04 11:24|| 2014-09-04 11:24|| Front Page Top

#11 3dc: that is interesting (and scary) info; would you be so kind as to provide some references to the source material please??

Posted by USN, Ret. 2014-09-04 15:18|| 2014-09-04 15:18|| Front Page Top

#12 Ret., check GM OnStar or Ford SYNC.
IEEE is a good resource for CDMA tracking.

Posted by Skidmark 2014-09-04 23:52|| 2014-09-04 23:52|| Front Page Top

#13 Also TPMS for the tire pressure reporting.

Posted by Skidmark 2014-09-04 23:54|| 2014-09-04 23:54|| Front Page Top

#14 USN, Ret - I used to work designing, testing, gathering the infrastructure side of call flows, stats and such at the company with the batwings logos.

I hated CALEA - its un-American. When I balked at some of it they brought in H1B visa holders to do it as they had no tradition of constitutional rights.

I've had really lucrative ideas nixed by drones from a 3 letter org because their current sats couldn't snoop on it in another country. (US was never the problem as FBI gets all data on the land side.) Same for other mediums then RF. "You can't do that. We can use it to spy. We don't care if it has a market valuation in the 100s of billions to trillions we claim it."

Autos and tires - look at ODB stds and some extensions that the EPA and Clinton's wanted.

odb-iii starts getting bad
http://lobby.la.psu.edu/_107th/093_OBD_Service_Info/Organizational_Statements/SEMA/SEMA_OBD_frequent_questions.htm

Posted by 3dc 2014-09-04 23:55|| 2014-09-04 23:55|| Front Page Top

23:55 3dc
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