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For a long time, cell phones operated in a hub way. Just like early computer networking with hubs, the tower would broadcast the packets to all phones in range,
by stephengillie 11y ago
For a long time, cell phones operated in a hub way. Just like early computer networking with hubs, the tower would broadcast the packets to all phones in range, and it was up to an individual phone to respond. There was a hack where a phone could be set to respond to all numbers, and thus hijack all communication on a tower. This attack has probably been mitigated somewhat in recent years.
- mindslight 11y agoActually all phones have to work this way, because the radio communication is essentially a shared medium (spatial beamforming notwithstanding). Hopefully modern protocols are properly designed to use encryption and nonce identifiers such that the other phones only see opaque packets. But a reprogrammed baseband could easily disrupt communications for everyone on the same cell, and there's no way around that. This is a major source of the culture of locked down secrecy that ends up pervading the rest of the stack.