4 ms·

Fake towers have always been super easy to detect. There are ways to be sneaky about it, but law enforcement doesn't care because it's not like they're going to

by px43 4y ago

Fake towers have always been super easy to detect. There are ways to be sneaky about it, but law enforcement doesn't care because it's not like they're going to have to face any consequences.

transpute 4y ago
If they are easy to detect, could OpenWRT and GrapheneOS block them, or be driven by a crowd-sourced blocklist?
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  For a while maybe. When such lists/apps become common enough then Siemens and others would just sell a addon for a fee that does a better job of spoofing the legit towers some of which they make. Then the block-lists would just become a placebo.
  - transpute 4y ago
    Sounds like cell towers have weaker identification than the average web/SSH server.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  If you can crowd source a blocklist and effectively keep the cops from interfering with your efforts, then you've solved a hard problem. If you have that level of coordination, you might be able to find something more impactful than interfering with surveillance to use it on.
  - transpute 4y ago
    IMSI catchers are not limited to law enforcement, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18469118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18469118 > With $20 of Gear from Amazon, Nearly Anyone Can Make This IMSI-Catcher in 30 Minutes. Surveillance takes on different character when it trickles down to more ordinary, everyday users. The significance and threat from IMSI-catchers is multiplied when a lot more people can deploy one using cheap tech from Amazon and free code from Github. Looks like U of Washington has a 2017 paper on city-scale tower anomaly detection, https://seaglass.cs.washington.edu/ https://seaglass.cs.washington.edu/ & https://seaglass-web.s3.amazonaws.com/SeaGlass___PETS_2017.pdf https://seaglass-web.s3.amazonaws.com/SeaGlass___PETS_2017.p...
    - dfc 4y ago
      That $20 quote is for 2g.
    - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
      An adversary is an adversary, law enforcement or otherwise. If you crowd source a list of that's useful in limiting your adversary's skulduggery, they're going to figure out how to become part of that crowd and "contribute" to your list in ways that make it useless. The fix is to get the crowd to participate in some kind of hygiene/self policing activity: Not impossible, but if we had a readily available solution to that problem we wouldn't have governments that don't follow their rules in the first place

by px43 4y ago

Fake towers have always been super easy to detect. There are ways to be sneaky about it, but law enforcement doesn't care because it's not like they're going to have to face any consequences.

transpute 4y ago

If they are easy to detect, could OpenWRT and GrapheneOS block them, or be driven by a crowd-sourced blocklist?

LinuxBender 4y ago
For a while maybe. When such lists/apps become common enough then Siemens and others would just sell a addon for a fee that does a better job of spoofing the legit towers some of which they make. Then the block-lists would just become a placebo.
- transpute 4y ago
  Sounds like cell towers have weaker identification than the average web/SSH server.
__MatrixMan__ 4y ago
If you can crowd source a blocklist and effectively keep the cops from interfering with your efforts, then you've solved a hard problem. If you have that level of coordination, you might be able to find something more impactful than interfering with surveillance to use it on.
- transpute 4y ago
  IMSI catchers are not limited to law enforcement, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18469118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18469118 > With $20 of Gear from Amazon, Nearly Anyone Can Make This IMSI-Catcher in 30 Minutes. Surveillance takes on different character when it trickles down to more ordinary, everyday users. The significance and threat from IMSI-catchers is multiplied when a lot more people can deploy one using cheap tech from Amazon and free code from Github. Looks like U of Washington has a 2017 paper on city-scale tower anomaly detection, https://seaglass.cs.washington.edu/ https://seaglass.cs.washington.edu/ & https://seaglass-web.s3.amazonaws.com/SeaGlass___PETS_2017.pdf https://seaglass-web.s3.amazonaws.com/SeaGlass___PETS_2017.p...
  - dfc 4y ago
    That $20 quote is for 2g.
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    An adversary is an adversary, law enforcement or otherwise. If you crowd source a list of that's useful in limiting your adversary's skulduggery, they're going to figure out how to become part of that crowd and "contribute" to your list in ways that make it useless. The fix is to get the crowd to participate in some kind of hygiene/self policing activity: Not impossible, but if we had a readily available solution to that problem we wouldn't have governments that don't follow their rules in the first place