Revealed: China suspected of spying on Americans via Caribbean phone networks tibet.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from tibet.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
‘Beijing using Flow to spy on US’
Article by December 17, 2020
The island’s leading telecommunications provider has been accused of helping China spy on Americans through the use of its mobile phone networks.
Mobile network security expert Gary Miller has told
The Guardian that Cable and Wireless Communications (Flow) in Barbados and the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC), allowed China to use its networks to “target, track and intercept phone communications of US phone subscribers”.
In response to requests from
Barbados TODAY for confirmation or denial of the report, Liberty Latin America, the parent company of C&W, did not give a definitive response.
China Engaged in ‘Mass Surveillance’ on Americans’ Mobile Phones, Report Finds
The Chinese regime exploited vulnerabilities in the global mobile telecommunications network to conduct “mass surveillance” on Americans, according to a recent report by a cyber research firm.
By analyzing signals data, the report by Washington-based Exigent Media found that Beijing, working through state-owned telecom operator China Unicom, was the leading source of attacks against U.S. mobile users over 3G and 4G networks in 2018.
The regime exploited well-known network vulnerabilities, which allowed it to track, monitor, disrupt, and intercept communications of U.S. phone subscribers while they traveled abroad. The vulnerabilities are centered around the legacy mobile SS7 signaling system, described in the report as “a patchwork system enabling network operators around the world to communicate with each other for international roaming services.”
US Embassy: China telecoms vendors cannot be trusted The headquarters of the Bahamas Telecommunications Company on John F. Kennedy Drive. FILE
In a statement issued yesterday, Daniel Durazo, the public affairs officer at the United States Embassy in The Bahamas, said telecom vendors subject to the governance of the People’s Republic of China cannot be trusted.
“As Secretary of State Pompeo has said, allowing untrusted, high-risk vendors into telecommunications networks makes critical systems vulnerable to disruption, manipulation, and espionage, and puts sensitive government, commercial, and personal information at risk,” he said.
“Countries need to be able to trust that equipment and software companies will not threaten national security, privacy, intellectual property, or human rights. Trust cannot exist where telecom vendors are subject to an authoritarian government, like the PRC, that lacks an independent judiciary or rule of law that would effectively prohibit thi
China may have found a backdoor to track the phones of Americans traveling abroad, exploiting signals from phone networks in the Caribbean to potentially track U.S. phones and intercept their messages.
Gary Miller, a Washington state-based former mobile network security executive, described China’s surveillance behavior in an interview with The Guardian, it reported Tuesday.
Miller said he believes China has routed mobile signaling messages through Cable & Wireless Communications (Flow) in Barbados and Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) to primarily target U.S. mobile users traveling abroad.
Phone users are not aware of the the signaling messages being sent to their mobile devices, but telecoms operators across the global network use these messages to locate mobile phones, link mobile phone users to one another and assess roaming charges. Miller told the Guardian that these signaling messages can also be used for more nefarious purposes, including allowing China to trac