Wed, Dec 23rd 2020 12:09pm
Karl Bode
In 2017, hackers and security researchers highlighted long-standing vulnerabilities in Signaling System 7 (SS7, or Common Channel Signalling System 7 in the US), a series of protocols first built in 1975 to help connect phone carriers around the world. While the problem isn t new, a 2016 60 Minutes report brought wider attention to the fact that the flaw can allow a hacker to track user location, dodge encryption, and even record private conversations. All while the intrusion looks like ordinary carrier to carrier chatter among a sea of other, privileged peering relationships.
Telecom carriers and lobbyists have routinely downplayed the flaw and their multi-year failure to do much about it. In 2018, the CBC noted how Canadian wireless providers Bell and Rogers weren t even willing to talk about the flaw after the news outlet published an investigation showing how (using only a mobile phone number) it was possible to intercept the calls and
The English Channel backchannel exploited by Israeli spy-tech firm
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Ekklesia | Warning on telecoms firms selling access to surveillance companies
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Dec. 17, 2020
The private Israeli intelligence firm Rayzone Group exploited a loophole in a mobile phone network to enable their clients to track people around the world, a joint investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Guardian revealed on Wednesday.
According to the investigation, Rayzone rented access to an arcane global messaging system in the Channel Islands that allowed them to “geolocate” mobile phone users across the world. The report also claims that this point in the Channel Islands was also used in efforts to locate Princess Sheikha Latifa al-Maktoum bint Mohammed Al Maktoum when she attempted to escape her father, Dubai s ruler, in 2018.