11 ms·

How Iran can track and control protesters’ phones: hacked documents

305 points by wstrange 4y ago

neonate 4y ago
https://archive.ph/gYSEG https://archive.ph/gYSEG
spicyusername 4y ago
Feels like we need to spread more awareness of more traditional, offline methods of organizing and protesting en masse, to avoid these kinds of exploits.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  In the US, I think most people I know have such weak in-person social patterns (beyond immediate family) that any organization system would be significantly less robust than even forty years ago.
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    To extend: are there even strong resources for systematic organization and resistance?
    - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      They would evolve when needed.
      - germinalphrase 4y ago
        Perhaps. Presumably any competent security force actively have/seek institutional knowledge on how to manage and suppress organized groups of people (kettling, etc). The information asymmetry here must be significant. Hoping that resources will simply appear feels foolhardy.
- godelski 4y ago
  Why can't we build distributed networks? I more mean like Google, Apple, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, etc building methods to communicate through WiFi/Bluetooth and not be completely reliant upon cellular. I don't mean your random 3rd party app that is useless because no one uses it. It helps the people that frequently text in the same room. It helps during natural disasters (including power outages). It helps prevent oppressive governments from shutting down communication. I see these companies talk a lot about promoting democracy, so I want to see them make an open protocol that is installed on all phones that allow this. They have the network effect that's required to do this. Hell, I think even if Apple or Google just did this others would follow. It cleanly fits into the new privacy + safety narratives both are selling.
  - azov 4y ago
    There is/was FireChat [1], which does exactly that. AFAIK it gained popularity during Hong Kong protests. Looks like it's now discontinued, not sure if there's a successor app. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat
    - godelski 4y ago
      I'm completely aware that there are apps that do these. The problem is the network effect. This app is all fine and dandy when you think ahead of time, but humans aren't really good at that (I have a laundry list of examples of us not doing this). So what I'm asking for is companies with a large network effect to leverage that, and their huge capital, to improve their existing products to be resistant to things like power outages and government shutdowns. It should be default, not require people to be proactive.
  - Syonyk 4y ago
    > Why can't we build distributed networks? We can... but I'll argue, very hard, that we shouldn't. Because it's the wrong technology to solve the problem, being based on the very things that are well targeted, understood, and frequently compromised. If the problem is "Cell phones are compromised through and through," which I'll argue they are, and Apple's addition of Lockdown to work through the fact that even their best sandboxing efforts have been bypassed argues for as well, then "doing things with cell phones" is a horrible idea, because once either an endpoint is compromised, or a tap is within range, you're still giving your adversaries everything they could desire. Both of those are basically certain in a protest.
- bergenty 4y ago
  Most people in the US don’t go to church or belong to any sizable community anymore. It’s going to be really hard to do anything that way.
- mradek 4y ago
  Social media has destroyed people’s ability (at least in western world) to have IRL interpersonal communications. I find not only myself but many of my peers struggle with this. Online is easy to be in an echo chamber where nothing actually gets done. You find acceptance but it is meaningless once you shut off your phone. You find community but it’s brittle and again you shut off your phone and you’re alone. What we need is a return real life in person social life. Being stuck in online/VR all day is basically a precursor to the matrix.
- Syonyk 4y ago
  Yes. Consumer technology, the internet, cell phones, etc, have all been tried and found wanting in a wide variety of ways. Unfortunately, because they're sort of "the default" for people, and there are a range of social media companies very, very invested in ensuring that "everything happens on their platforms," we've lost the skills required to do that sort of thing. We ought to be re-developing them in a hurry, because cell phones, internet, etc, have all proven themselves quite evil.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Bring back the fax machine!!!
rolfrp 4y ago
politics aside, based on public information it feels like the main difference between this and all the other metadata-type systems in place is the centralised ability to downgrade connections?
- drjasonharrison 4y ago
  I think the magnitude and extent of the integration is a big difference. The cellular and internet providers essentially work for the government at all times.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    Aren't cellular providers running on government-regulated spectrum anyway? Why is it surprising that they would be working for the government?
amir734jj 4y ago
I'm an Iranian and the current situation in Iran is not good. No internet. Businesses have stopped because of uncertainty and constant protests and crackdowns. I don't know what will happen next. I think it will get uglier.
- xenospn 4y ago
  Stay safe! Hope it gets better soon.
  - winrid 4y ago
    the west in one comment
    - baxtr 4y ago
      “We will send troops to overthrow your government” - the West in one comment “We will send money and weapons so that you can defend yourselves” - the West in one comment “We will mandate sanctions on your government” - the West in one comment “We will do nothing just wish you all the best” - the West in one comment
      - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
        He who tries to change the world, from a position in power, will always have the barking of the underdogs. Its easy beeing a underdog, you dont have to provide analysis or better solutions, you dont have to proof that you are not delusional, that those you represent are good (lots of evil ex-empires among todays underdogs), all you have to do is bark and bite. Even if you have a "desert-mumified" culture like in the middle east, that has adapted to survival in a manmade dessert, without risky progress. Even landing a western spaceship, proofing things can thrive in the dessert, will not change what people have internalized over the centuries. Rather the local culture rubs off on the spaceship and it begins to rust into the same empire scrap yard. Things proofen not to work: * military interventions * secret service interventions * cultural nudging (soft power) * brute force take-overs (colonialism) Ironically, if humanity goes into desert mode, it brings the desert with it. You produce lots of offspring for the inevitable war, when crashing into the resource ceiling. You shun risky capitalist endavours. You vote for one strong man and against diversity of opinion and culture. (prevents civil war, which is always worser then external warfare). And we had that in medieval europe too, just listen to a catholic preacher and you can hear the bad times ruleset singing itself praises, less your lineage withers. A maxed out environment is a trap, preventing complex structures and escape attempts. @qpqpdbdbqpqp I honestly do not see were my viewpoint is racist. I argue that all of humanity, when run into a ressource spares environment, is behaviour optimized towards this loop. The "western spaceships" aka iraq and afghanistan were doomed to fail, as all the outside surplus is converted into "catastrophe" preparations or escape plans. Would have done the same in the situation. Israel might be a exemption for now, but even there the orthodox "survial-mode" culture is taking over the enlightment project form within. And its universal. As soon as things run out, conservative mindsets take over and all ventures and endavours come to a screeching halt. Sorry, if the physical limitations and the negative impression it made on humanity, scare you and your idealized view of the world.
bcherny 4y ago
It’s interesting that IMEI seems to be the primary key that much of these backdoor commands rely on. Collating your IMEI against historical info, the government knows where you’ve been and with whom; collating it against other personal data, it can figure out your address, employer, birth certificate, etc. I wonder how people might obfuscate or rotate their IMEIs, to prevent this kind of tracking and collation?
- stefan_ 4y ago
  Oh, I see the misunderstanding; this is fully intentional and by specification. Think "please don't encrypt SNI we need to spy on people" but much more sinister. The whole 2G thing in this article is really outdated, though. So much so that they featured this kind of tracking in The Wire (remember "Stingrays"). But that only really matters for external actors; if the government controls the mobile providers, all of this and much more remains possible.
- dilyevsky 4y ago
  This tracking technique is almost as old as spoofing your imei
- gruez 4y ago
  >I wonder how people might obfuscate or rotate their IMEIs, to prevent this kind of tracking and collation? Spoofing your IMEI won't do much considering it's tied to your IMSI (sim card). You'd need a burner phone + burner SIM for actual anonymity.
  - SnowHill9902 4y ago
    Even then it can be relatively easily correlated if you are a high enough value target.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    I doubt you can get burner phones and/or SIMs in Iran.
    - 4y ago
jimmySixDOF 4y ago
The English version PDF document going into the specific digit manipulation and service code string formats looks to me like a boilerplate they started with and I would be surprised if they have renamed all the methods and variables let alone modified any format structure. It should be easy to figure out the software platform they are using and even if this got sold through a front company there will be a very nervous LI system vendor and supply chain out there somewhere who is about to have a ton of bricks come down on them.
luxpir 4y ago
https://briarproject.org/ https://briarproject.org/ Airplane mode + Briar. It's really well designed for these situations. You can share the app directly via the app. No need for cellular connections.
- sixhobbits 4y ago
  I tried this a few years ago out of curiosity and couldn't get it to work at all. Tried again now and the UX seems more polished but got "sorry Briar has crashed" immediately after trying to add a contact. I am always surprised at how hard it is to network any nearby devices on any hardware or OS compared to sharing files/messages etc via the Internet.
- squarefoot 4y ago
  I think there is no way to have true security on a cellphone; the surface of attack is so wide that although one uses only FOSS apps, the platform can host all sorts of backdoors buried either in the OS or in the hardware/firmware themselves, so that any attempt to communicate through strong encryption might be rendered futile by code running at higher privileges (device drivers and firmware, conveniently all closed) which would access sent data before encryption and received data after decryption, mirroring them home somewhere unbeknownst to the user. Now I don't think the Iran govt has any leverage to force companies to release their sources, nor forcing them to install backdoors on their behalf, but if they found a way to sneak new firmware or system level apps into phones sold there, that would be a possibility.
  - godelski 4y ago
    This is the wrong threat model, I say more here[0]. There's a difference in threat model when you're an individual vs part of a large protest/revolution. A government can't arrest everyone. They can definitely get a mole into the encrypted discussion (even if it isn't technological). You can't vet hundreds of people in such a short time. Protests and revolutions have been organized in the open on Facebook and Twitter for exactly this reason. Because it doesn't matter. You're going to go out and show your face to CCTV anyways. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33400739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33400739
Guthur 4y ago
[flagged]
onetokeoverthe 4y ago
sharikous 4y ago
It saddens me a lot but my prediction is that these protest won't overthrow anything. As long as there is no help from at least part of the military there is no hope for the protests to grow into a revolution. We have seen it in Belarus. But when Khamenei dies there is a window of opportunity for Iran to become a military dictatorship instead of the current theocracy.
- dmos62 4y ago
  It's not binary. If it weren't for the popular protests in Belarus, Belarus would have probably joined Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Belarus revolution didn't happen (yet), but its men are not dying in Ukraine. Also, this is tangential, but after the war in Ukraine, a significant contingent of Belarussians fighting in Ukraine (for Ukraine) will return to Belarus. Who knows what an armed, war-hardened dissident military faction can do; in contrast, Maidan was won by armed civilians.
icare_1er 4y ago
Just the fact that Iranian government routinely emits parasite radio signals to jam foreign Persian broadcasts (BBC Farsi, Manoto, etc), while knowing this causes significant health issues to its population, shows you how far they are ready to go before they are overthrown.
- gausswho 4y ago
  i tried to find evidence of the significant health effects of jamming and was unsuccessful.
  - icare_1er 4y ago
    "Medical authorities in the Shiraz area estimate that local satellite jamming activity is likely to result in at least 24,000 cancer cases in the coming years, and a senior Iranian health official has stated publicly that, “recent studies show that jamming signals and waves have side effects and can increase the risk of cancer.” https://spacewatch.global/2017/04/iranian-satellite-jamming-shiraz-cause-24000-cancer-cases-coming-years/ https://spacewatch.global/2017/04/iranian-satellite-jamming-... Or here: https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iran-staellite-jamming-health/29364815.html https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iran-staellite-jamming-health/29...
    - gausswho 4y ago
      What I'm interested in is what's referred to here as the 'recent studies'. Medical research is important here because there have long been concerns around electromagnetic waves causing cancer, but none to my knowledge have held up. Such as living under power lines or near radio stations, cellphones. That's not to say the radio jamming in this case is not using a dramatically more dangerous method.
icare_1er 4y ago
Why would lowering speed of a communication make interception easier ? I am thinking in terms of Internet standards (TCP/IP, TLS, etc) and know nothing about telephony: "This ability to downgrade users’ speed and network quality is particularly pernicious because it can not only obstruct one’s ability to use their phone, but also make whatever communication is still possible vulnerable to interception."
- icare_1er 4y ago
  So, reading further, it seems to be a downgrade attack where they force the connection to be made over 2G. I wonder if that would then be visible on the victim's phone. I didn't even know 2G existed...
- GoblinSlayer 4y ago
  In the old days we had https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmodem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmodem that could send digital data over 1G sound channel. Something like that should be possible for 2G potentially adding e2ee, but it's useful for any cellular protocol, because none of them provide e2ee, not 5G, none. The article mentioning 5G as something good forgets to mention that 5G is fully inspectable.
paulcarroty 4y ago
Hint: Nokia 8110 on GerdaOS can change IMEI: https://gerda.tech https://gerda.tech No idea about how hard it will be to get the device in Iran.
tinus_hn 4y ago
It doesn’t make a lot of sense that they’re trying to move people to old protocols that can be intercepted. It’s an authoritarian country, why not intercept at the provider who has all the keys anyway?

305 points by wstrange 4y ago

https://archive.ph/gYSEG https://archive.ph/gYSEG

Feels like we need to spread more awareness of more traditional, offline methods of organizing and protesting en masse, to avoid these kinds of exploits.

germinalphrase 4y ago
In the US, I think most people I know have such weak in-person social patterns (beyond immediate family) that any organization system would be significantly less robust than even forty years ago.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  To extend: are there even strong resources for systematic organization and resistance?
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    They would evolve when needed.
    - germinalphrase 4y ago
      Perhaps. Presumably any competent security force actively have/seek institutional knowledge on how to manage and suppress organized groups of people (kettling, etc). The information asymmetry here must be significant. Hoping that resources will simply appear feels foolhardy.
godelski 4y ago
Why can't we build distributed networks? I more mean like Google, Apple, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, etc building methods to communicate through WiFi/Bluetooth and not be completely reliant upon cellular. I don't mean your random 3rd party app that is useless because no one uses it. It helps the people that frequently text in the same room. It helps during natural disasters (including power outages). It helps prevent oppressive governments from shutting down communication. I see these companies talk a lot about promoting democracy, so I want to see them make an open protocol that is installed on all phones that allow this. They have the network effect that's required to do this. Hell, I think even if Apple or Google just did this others would follow. It cleanly fits into the new privacy + safety narratives both are selling.
- azov 4y ago
  There is/was FireChat [1], which does exactly that. AFAIK it gained popularity during Hong Kong protests. Looks like it's now discontinued, not sure if there's a successor app. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat
  - godelski 4y ago
    I'm completely aware that there are apps that do these. The problem is the network effect. This app is all fine and dandy when you think ahead of time, but humans aren't really good at that (I have a laundry list of examples of us not doing this). So what I'm asking for is companies with a large network effect to leverage that, and their huge capital, to improve their existing products to be resistant to things like power outages and government shutdowns. It should be default, not require people to be proactive.
- Syonyk 4y ago
  > Why can't we build distributed networks? We can... but I'll argue, very hard, that we shouldn't. Because it's the wrong technology to solve the problem, being based on the very things that are well targeted, understood, and frequently compromised. If the problem is "Cell phones are compromised through and through," which I'll argue they are, and Apple's addition of Lockdown to work through the fact that even their best sandboxing efforts have been bypassed argues for as well, then "doing things with cell phones" is a horrible idea, because once either an endpoint is compromised, or a tap is within range, you're still giving your adversaries everything they could desire. Both of those are basically certain in a protest.
bergenty 4y ago
Most people in the US don’t go to church or belong to any sizable community anymore. It’s going to be really hard to do anything that way.
mradek 4y ago
Social media has destroyed people’s ability (at least in western world) to have IRL interpersonal communications. I find not only myself but many of my peers struggle with this. Online is easy to be in an echo chamber where nothing actually gets done. You find acceptance but it is meaningless once you shut off your phone. You find community but it’s brittle and again you shut off your phone and you’re alone. What we need is a return real life in person social life. Being stuck in online/VR all day is basically a precursor to the matrix.
Syonyk 4y ago
Yes. Consumer technology, the internet, cell phones, etc, have all been tried and found wanting in a wide variety of ways. Unfortunately, because they're sort of "the default" for people, and there are a range of social media companies very, very invested in ensuring that "everything happens on their platforms," we've lost the skills required to do that sort of thing. We ought to be re-developing them in a hurry, because cell phones, internet, etc, have all proven themselves quite evil.
dylan604 4y ago
Bring back the fax machine!!!

rolfrp 4y ago

politics aside, based on public information it feels like the main difference between this and all the other metadata-type systems in place is the centralised ability to downgrade connections?

drjasonharrison 4y ago
I think the magnitude and extent of the integration is a big difference. The cellular and internet providers essentially work for the government at all times.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Aren't cellular providers running on government-regulated spectrum anyway? Why is it surprising that they would be working for the government?

amir734jj 4y ago

I'm an Iranian and the current situation in Iran is not good. No internet. Businesses have stopped because of uncertainty and constant protests and crackdowns. I don't know what will happen next. I think it will get uglier.

xenospn 4y ago
Stay safe! Hope it gets better soon.
- winrid 4y ago
  the west in one comment
  - baxtr 4y ago
    “We will send troops to overthrow your government” - the West in one comment “We will send money and weapons so that you can defend yourselves” - the West in one comment “We will mandate sanctions on your government” - the West in one comment “We will do nothing just wish you all the best” - the West in one comment
    - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
      He who tries to change the world, from a position in power, will always have the barking of the underdogs. Its easy beeing a underdog, you dont have to provide analysis or better solutions, you dont have to proof that you are not delusional, that those you represent are good (lots of evil ex-empires among todays underdogs), all you have to do is bark and bite. Even if you have a "desert-mumified" culture like in the middle east, that has adapted to survival in a manmade dessert, without risky progress. Even landing a western spaceship, proofing things can thrive in the dessert, will not change what people have internalized over the centuries. Rather the local culture rubs off on the spaceship and it begins to rust into the same empire scrap yard. Things proofen not to work: * military interventions * secret service interventions * cultural nudging (soft power) * brute force take-overs (colonialism) Ironically, if humanity goes into desert mode, it brings the desert with it. You produce lots of offspring for the inevitable war, when crashing into the resource ceiling. You shun risky capitalist endavours. You vote for one strong man and against diversity of opinion and culture. (prevents civil war, which is always worser then external warfare). And we had that in medieval europe too, just listen to a catholic preacher and you can hear the bad times ruleset singing itself praises, less your lineage withers. A maxed out environment is a trap, preventing complex structures and escape attempts. @qpqpdbdbqpqp I honestly do not see were my viewpoint is racist. I argue that all of humanity, when run into a ressource spares environment, is behaviour optimized towards this loop. The "western spaceships" aka iraq and afghanistan were doomed to fail, as all the outside surplus is converted into "catastrophe" preparations or escape plans. Would have done the same in the situation. Israel might be a exemption for now, but even there the orthodox "survial-mode" culture is taking over the enlightment project form within. And its universal. As soon as things run out, conservative mindsets take over and all ventures and endavours come to a screeching halt. Sorry, if the physical limitations and the negative impression it made on humanity, scare you and your idealized view of the world.

bcherny 4y ago

It’s interesting that IMEI seems to be the primary key that much of these backdoor commands rely on. Collating your IMEI against historical info, the government knows where you’ve been and with whom; collating it against other personal data, it can figure out your address, employer, birth certificate, etc. I wonder how people might obfuscate or rotate their IMEIs, to prevent this kind of tracking and collation?

stefan_ 4y ago
Oh, I see the misunderstanding; this is fully intentional and by specification. Think "please don't encrypt SNI we need to spy on people" but much more sinister. The whole 2G thing in this article is really outdated, though. So much so that they featured this kind of tracking in The Wire (remember "Stingrays"). But that only really matters for external actors; if the government controls the mobile providers, all of this and much more remains possible.
dilyevsky 4y ago
This tracking technique is almost as old as spoofing your imei
gruez 4y ago
>I wonder how people might obfuscate or rotate their IMEIs, to prevent this kind of tracking and collation? Spoofing your IMEI won't do much considering it's tied to your IMSI (sim card). You'd need a burner phone + burner SIM for actual anonymity.
- SnowHill9902 4y ago
  Even then it can be relatively easily correlated if you are a high enough value target.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  I doubt you can get burner phones and/or SIMs in Iran.
  - 4y ago

jimmySixDOF 4y ago

The English version PDF document going into the specific digit manipulation and service code string formats looks to me like a boilerplate they started with and I would be surprised if they have renamed all the methods and variables let alone modified any format structure. It should be easy to figure out the software platform they are using and even if this got sold through a front company there will be a very nervous LI system vendor and supply chain out there somewhere who is about to have a ton of bricks come down on them.

luxpir 4y ago

https://briarproject.org/ https://briarproject.org/ Airplane mode + Briar. It's really well designed for these situations. You can share the app directly via the app. No need for cellular connections.

sixhobbits 4y ago
I tried this a few years ago out of curiosity and couldn't get it to work at all. Tried again now and the UX seems more polished but got "sorry Briar has crashed" immediately after trying to add a contact. I am always surprised at how hard it is to network any nearby devices on any hardware or OS compared to sharing files/messages etc via the Internet.
squarefoot 4y ago
I think there is no way to have true security on a cellphone; the surface of attack is so wide that although one uses only FOSS apps, the platform can host all sorts of backdoors buried either in the OS or in the hardware/firmware themselves, so that any attempt to communicate through strong encryption might be rendered futile by code running at higher privileges (device drivers and firmware, conveniently all closed) which would access sent data before encryption and received data after decryption, mirroring them home somewhere unbeknownst to the user. Now I don't think the Iran govt has any leverage to force companies to release their sources, nor forcing them to install backdoors on their behalf, but if they found a way to sneak new firmware or system level apps into phones sold there, that would be a possibility.
- godelski 4y ago
  This is the wrong threat model, I say more here[0]. There's a difference in threat model when you're an individual vs part of a large protest/revolution. A government can't arrest everyone. They can definitely get a mole into the encrypted discussion (even if it isn't technological). You can't vet hundreds of people in such a short time. Protests and revolutions have been organized in the open on Facebook and Twitter for exactly this reason. Because it doesn't matter. You're going to go out and show your face to CCTV anyways. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33400739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33400739

Guthur 4y ago

[flagged]

onetokeoverthe 4y ago

sharikous 4y ago

It saddens me a lot but my prediction is that these protest won't overthrow anything. As long as there is no help from at least part of the military there is no hope for the protests to grow into a revolution. We have seen it in Belarus. But when Khamenei dies there is a window of opportunity for Iran to become a military dictatorship instead of the current theocracy.

dmos62 4y ago
It's not binary. If it weren't for the popular protests in Belarus, Belarus would have probably joined Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Belarus revolution didn't happen (yet), but its men are not dying in Ukraine. Also, this is tangential, but after the war in Ukraine, a significant contingent of Belarussians fighting in Ukraine (for Ukraine) will return to Belarus. Who knows what an armed, war-hardened dissident military faction can do; in contrast, Maidan was won by armed civilians.

icare_1er 4y ago

Just the fact that Iranian government routinely emits parasite radio signals to jam foreign Persian broadcasts (BBC Farsi, Manoto, etc), while knowing this causes significant health issues to its population, shows you how far they are ready to go before they are overthrown.

gausswho 4y ago
i tried to find evidence of the significant health effects of jamming and was unsuccessful.
- icare_1er 4y ago
  "Medical authorities in the Shiraz area estimate that local satellite jamming activity is likely to result in at least 24,000 cancer cases in the coming years, and a senior Iranian health official has stated publicly that, “recent studies show that jamming signals and waves have side effects and can increase the risk of cancer.” https://spacewatch.global/2017/04/iranian-satellite-jamming-shiraz-cause-24000-cancer-cases-coming-years/ https://spacewatch.global/2017/04/iranian-satellite-jamming-... Or here: https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iran-staellite-jamming-health/29364815.html https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iran-staellite-jamming-health/29...
  - gausswho 4y ago
    What I'm interested in is what's referred to here as the 'recent studies'. Medical research is important here because there have long been concerns around electromagnetic waves causing cancer, but none to my knowledge have held up. Such as living under power lines or near radio stations, cellphones. That's not to say the radio jamming in this case is not using a dramatically more dangerous method.

icare_1er 4y ago

Why would lowering speed of a communication make interception easier ? I am thinking in terms of Internet standards (TCP/IP, TLS, etc) and know nothing about telephony: "This ability to downgrade users’ speed and network quality is particularly pernicious because it can not only obstruct one’s ability to use their phone, but also make whatever communication is still possible vulnerable to interception."

icare_1er 4y ago
So, reading further, it seems to be a downgrade attack where they force the connection to be made over 2G. I wonder if that would then be visible on the victim's phone. I didn't even know 2G existed...
GoblinSlayer 4y ago
In the old days we had https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmodem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmodem that could send digital data over 1G sound channel. Something like that should be possible for 2G potentially adding e2ee, but it's useful for any cellular protocol, because none of them provide e2ee, not 5G, none. The article mentioning 5G as something good forgets to mention that 5G is fully inspectable.

paulcarroty 4y ago

Hint: Nokia 8110 on GerdaOS can change IMEI: https://gerda.tech https://gerda.tech No idea about how hard it will be to get the device in Iran.

tinus_hn 4y ago

It doesn’t make a lot of sense that they’re trying to move people to old protocols that can be intercepted. It’s an authoritarian country, why not intercept at the provider who has all the keys anyway?