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SeaGlass: City-Wide IMSI-Catcher Detection (2017)
- morpheuskafka 3y agoHere's something I've never understood about these: as devices that transmit on FCC-licensed bands, wouldn't each use of these require specific permission from the FCC? Especially for state level law enforcement and state courts, they wouldn't have the authority to authorize this without the federal government saying it's OK.
- ceejayoz 3y agohttps://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/fcc-created-stingray-problem-now-it-needs-fix-it https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/fcc-created-stingray-p... > The FCC's involvement in cell site simulators began years ago when it first approved commercial sales to law enforcement. Documents disclosed under FOIA show that the company that sells Stingrays had local police departments lobby the FCC close to ten years ago for approval.
- vngzs 3y agoThat's a question shared by several US senators [0]. Ron Wyden sent a similar letter in 2018, which received a response from an assistant attorney general, not the FCC [1]. [0]: https://www.eff.org/files/2016/10/06/senate_letter_to_fcc_on_stingray_devices.pdf https://www.eff.org/files/2016/10/06/senate_letter_to_fcc_on... [1]: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-355228A2.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-355228A2.pdf
- diydsp 3y agoI dont think they need to xmit beyond the baitphone making standard connections. Also there are apps for scanning and tracking celltower stength and mass-logging GPS data. I think that data could be the input to their detector... don't need a trunk full of HW.
- diydsp 3y agoWould anyone who downvoted this please explain why they think this system needs any special permission from the FCC? Afaict, it's simply monitoring the interactions of its bait phone with towers.
- callalex 3y agoThe discussion is about FCC approval for the police to set up a rogue cell site, not FCC approval for this research project.
- 14 3y agoProbably downvoting your comment about not needing a trunk full of hardware. “ These sensors have advantages over phones because they can contain specialized cellular scanning equipment and external antennas for farther reception ranges. While phone apps can see limited information on the tower currently connected to, our sensors scan the spectrum to measure hundreds of channels at a time and dozens of broadcast properties.” So there is an advantage over using a regular cell phone and an app.
- ajsnigrutin 3y agoYes, there are (eg. wigle.net, mostly based around wifi, but also scans cell towers), but the data is very noisy, since every phone is different and everyone wears it differently (if you wear it higher, in a shirt pocket, you'll get higher signal levels than if you carry it in a pants pocket, or in your hand, or if you have an old iphone, if you're holding it in your left hand instead of the right).
- upofadown 3y agoLast I looked at this the FCC had issued an exception to the normal rules against intentional interference. The resulting license is based on the idea that the devices will only be used under emergency conditions. Presumably the operators of the devices are having lots of emergencies. I think the problem here is that the federal law against intentional interference is quite definite. So this is the best loophole that the FCC could come up with.
- Havoc 3y agoPretty sure it’s possible to catch some imsi 100% passive though during handover
- avg_dev 3y agobeautiful image at the top of the page. I realize that it is a map, meant to convey some information. but I just like it
- ncr100 3y agoIf I read the results correctly, weird to see a potential cell-catcher at the US Immigration center. Could this reasonably be interpreted as "someone is sniffing immigrant's cell traffic" .. gathering intelligence about potential candidates for immigration?
- techdmn 3y agoJust a wild guess, but If I were trying to find illegal immigrants, seeding a social graph with legal immigrants might be a good place to start. (This comment is in no way an endorsement of the methods or goals of ICE.)
- willcipriano 3y agoThey straight up give them cell phones when they release them into the interior[0]. None of that is required. This is to catch mules bringing over drugs and sex traffickers most likely. Once they get to the other side, need to call for a pick up. [0]https://apnews.com/article/immigration-covid-technology-business-health-2823ba115ab2c120d728881c0a7bb5e8 https://apnews.com/article/immigration-covid-technology-busi...
- avs733 3y agoI read that entire article and nowhere does it say they give them phones. The entire article is about installing an app on their personal phones.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- willcipriano 3y agoTried to find a neutral article. All of the rest of them highlight how ineffective this move by the Biden administration has been. https://abcnews4.com/news/nation-world/costly-failure-biden-admin-gave-300k-smartphones-to-migrants-costs-over-360k-a-day-cell-phone-alternatives-detention-program-ice-customs-immigration-illegal-president-white-house-joe-mexico-border https://abcnews4.com/news/nation-world/costly-failure-biden-...
- guwop 3y agothis is from 17' does anyone know of any updated resources on imsi detection? perhaps some cool papers?
- notjulianjaynes 3y agoThis is no longer being maintained as of 2022, but I think is more recent than SeaGlass. https://github.com/EFForg/crocodilehunter https://github.com/EFForg/crocodilehunter
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ta8645 3y agoAn explanation wasn't prominently displayed on that web site, so from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI-catcher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI-catcher : An international mobile subscriber identity-catcher, or IMSI-catcher, is a telephone eavesdropping device used for intercepting mobile phone traffic and tracking location data of mobile phone users. Essentially a "fake" mobile tower acting between the target mobile phone and the service provider's real towers, it is considered a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- H8crilA 3y agoHow come the tower doesn't have to cryptographically authenticate with the phone? Like websites do, using TLS certificates.
- Ms-J 3y agoThis may be of use to you: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/05/14/a-few-thoughts-on-cellular-encryption/ https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/05/14/a-few-th... "GSM phones authenticate to the tower, but the tower doesn’t authenticate back. This means that anyone can create a ‘fake’ tower that your phone will connect to. The major problem here is that in GSM, the tower gets to pick the encryption algorithm! That means your attacker can simply turn encryption off (by setting encryption ‘algorithm’ A5/0) and simply route the cleartext data itself.In theory your phone is supposed to alert you to this kind of attack, but the SIM chip contains a bit that can de-active the warning. And (as researcher Chris Paget discovered) carriers often set this bit."
- livueta 3y agoAlong with the sibling comment, there are also protocol downgrade attacks analogous to what HSTS prevents in HTTP/S. IIRC these require active jamming, but if you're .gov who cares. This is a reason why security-conscious OSes like Graphene allow explicitly disabling older protocols.
- dang 3y agoRelated: SeaGlass: City-Wide IMSI-Catcher Detection (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27173717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27173717 - May 2021 (55 comments) SeaGlass – Enabling City-Wide IMSI-Catcher Detection - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14474956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14474956 - June 2017 (36 comments)
- wintermutestwin 3y agoI always figure that the times when I have 3 bars and yet zero internet are when local leo is using a stingray. You would think cell providers would sue over the disruption of their service. /i am mostly clue free about this stuff so this post might include erroneous assumptions
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- greatartiste 3y agoCheck if your phone has dropped to 2G. It is rare to find a location which only has 2G coverage but when it happens while voice/sms works OK data speed drops to almost zero.
- beachy 3y ago> There are some cases where legitimate cell towers will be moved to deal with a temporary increase in demand, like a sporting event, but this is relatively uncommon. My understanding is these are quite commonly used for concerts, sporting events etc., Vodafone called them COWS (Cell site on wheels). Anecdotally when the Vodafone CEO of the time came to visit NZ, some lackeys were charged with staying physically close behind him with a COW so he would always see good reception.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- solarkraft 3y agoOne brand of these is "Funklochstopfer", which extended the Telekom network at this year's Chaos Communication Camp (maybe also Eventphone, but not O2, apparently).
- bitexploder 3y agoYou can go to most any cell provider and get a femtocell. Same thing, just a smaller power :)
- fulafel 3y agoDoes this still work against current cell networks, is it a downgrade attack to 2g or are there other holes in how the network authenticates itself to the phone?
- red0point 3y agoAs it turns out, you do not even need cell site simulators / false base station to do IMSI catching. In my research, I developed a technique to attack a phone with low power from km away, without being able to be detected at all with traditional tools like SeaGlass or Crocodile Hunter. It‘s published here and works against production LTE networks, no downgrade attacks whatsoever necessary: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3495243.3560525 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3495243.3560525
- eru 3y ago(For people wary of ACM's paywalls: this specific paper seems to be open access. Nice!)
- darkclouds 3y agoIn the UK Vodafone use 5G-NSA, other telco's use 5G-SA as its more battery friendly.
- abwizz 3y agohttps://sci-hub.st/ https://sci-hub.st/ you're welcome
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoDirect link to PDF https://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.05039.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.05039.pdf https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/handle/20.500.11850/555926/2106.05039.pdf https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/handle/20....
- Gasp0de 3y agoWhy is it using an inverter only to power what seems to be two dc power supplies? That seems unnecessary.
- _9za9 3y agoThank you for noticing. I am always trying to explain to vehicle dwellers, off the grid users, and housed people who have solar how DC -> DC rather than DC -> AC -> DC is the way to go, but people can't seem to understand beyond the AC that they get in a usual house from the energy company.
- xnyan 3y agoAny efficient “DC to DC” converter is going to invert DC to AC as step one. If you need different dc voltages, an inverter coupled with various ac-dc power supplies in low power applications is perfectly fine.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Gasp0de 3y agoCan you explain this? I thought buck converters just switch the supply side on and off rapidly and use a capacitor to flatten the output?
- h2odragon 3y ago2017, code link: https://github.com/seaglass-project/seaglass https://github.com/seaglass-project/seaglass Pi connected to a Cell modem, mobile hotspot, and "bait phone" ... and a separate GPS. All powered by wall warts off an inverter to the car's 12v system. This makes me feel better about my own systems designs.
- physhster 3y agoI was going to mention that but you beat me to it... The power distribution is not very efficient, but hey, if it's stupid and it works, then it's not stupid.
- msla 3y ago> if it's stupid and it works, then it's not stupid. I hate this phrase. Leaded gasoline worked, but it was so stupid it actively made people stupid. Storing passwords plaintext works, but the first time your system gets broken into it's a massive problem. Driving at 80 mph in a rainstorm is stupid and it works until it rather spectacularly doesn't.
- giantrobot 3y agoThe "works" part of the phrase does a lot of heavy lifting. Things can "work" in one dimension/context and fail in others. Stupid things can also "work" in several dimensions/contexts as well as smarter solutions.
- HWR_14 3y agoI always heard it used for things that were overbuilt and required too many resources, especially human resources. Door motion detector broken? a human hitting a manual door open button when they see people is "stupid but it works". Need to build a bridge but don't have an engineer? Piling rubble in the water until you get a path across is "stupid but it works".
- niloc132 3y ago“43. If it's stupid and it works, it's still stupid and you're lucky.” https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/SchlockMercenary https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/SchlockMercena...