3 ms·
Why would it? The SIM card itself has no real functionality, and cannot just randomly affect the radio components of the phone. It just stores its identity and
by Tehnix 8y ago
Why would it? The SIM card itself has no real functionality, and cannot just randomly affect the radio components of the phone. It just stores its identity and keys, so the cell tower can identify and bill the right user.
The way the location tracking works is simply by logging what phone connected to the cell tower, at the tower itself. To be able to adjust the power the radio component needs to output (to get a good signal), it needs to know the distance to the tower. You get location by then correlating with multiple towers, because the phone has to choose which one it has the strongest reception to, and therefore has to gather data from all nearby towers.
In short: that’s not how a SIM card works.
- lowry 8y agoSIM cards do run some sophisticated software, e.g. a. Java Card runtime.
- Tehnix 8y agoEven with something running on it, that’s not automatically gonna give it access to any other hardware component in the phone. The phone itself is only interested in using it for identification.
- mehrdadn 8y ago> Even with something running on it, that’s not automatically gonna give it access to any other hardware component in the phone. The phone itself is only interested in using it for identification. I can't tell if this is true or false, but it seems that in either case, access to the SIM can imply access location data: > With the all-important (and till-now elusive) encryption key, Nohl could send a virus to the SIM card, which could then send premium text messages, collect location data, make premium calls or re-route calls. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2013/07/21/sim-cards-have-finally-been-hacked-and-the-flaw-could-affect-millions-of-phones/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2013/07/21/sim-cards...
- ForHackernews 8y agoLeaving aside the SIM card, there's no way to really know what the baseband is up to: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/170874-the-secret-second-operating-system-that-could-make-every-mobile-phone-insecure https://www.extremetech.com/computing/170874-the-secret-seco...