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It is inappropriate to assert that a capability from 2003, used against what were almost certainly Nokia x100-series GSM phones, will still work against devices

It is inappropriate to assert that a capability from 2003, used against what were almost certainly Nokia x100-series GSM phones, will still work against devices in 2025.

autoexec 2y ago
Why should anyone think that if the NSA was backdooring phones in 2003 they wouldn't be doing the same thing in 2025?
- snakeyjake 2y ago
  Why should anyone think that if the NSA was brute forcing DES in 2003 they wouldn't be doing the same thing to AES256 in 2025?
  - autoexec 2y ago
    brute forcing AES256 would require computing power that, as far as we know, the NSA doesn't have. That's a very different situation than the NSA being able to force the hand of the extremely small number of US companies who are legally able to produce the baseband chipsets found in every single cell phone. All the NSA has to do is hand a single national security letter to Qualcomm and they'd be able to backdoor half of the entire market. That's just the hardware. To backdoor the software they only need to knock on the doors of two corporations.
numpad0 2y ago
By September 2004, a new NSA technique enabled the agency to find cellphones even when they were turned off. JSOC troops called this "The Find," and it gave them thousands of new targets, including members of a burgeoning al-Qaeda-sponsored insurgency in Iraq, according to members of the unit. Sounds more like a radar metal detector sort of thing than phone hacking.
- autoexec 2y ago
  My guess is that they used bluetooth beacons. Google decided to get into the action themselves with Android 15, but that's just counting what's built into the OS, not the chipsets themselves. https://techbriefly.com/2024/03/15/android-15-powered-off-finding/ https://techbriefly.com/2024/03/15/android-15-powered-off-fi...
  - snakeyjake 2y ago
    It was not common for the low-end phones of the type used by Iraqi insurgents in 2003 to be equipped with Bluetooth. Remember the "NSA can track phones when turned off" was from 2003. Try to remember 2003, then adjust your memories to match the reality for an impoverished Iraqi. My guess is that because they controlled the cellular network they pushed out an OTA firmware that made it so the phones didn't actually turn off but went into one of the ARM7TDMI's low power modes where it would wake up periodically and ping a tower before going back to sleep without turning on the screen. Those modes used so little power you wouldn't notice a difference in overall battery life. This would be trivially detectable by any party with a $10 SDR dongle in 2025.
    - numpad0 2y ago
      Or it could be a radar that resonate with common GSM filter circuitries or Nokia BL-4C or something like that. Quoted problem definition is "find cellphones even when they were turned off", not "locate" or "track" "a phone" or "user turns off". It's also supposedly something US JSOC is involved with, which is more like IRL Call of Duty group of people than black suited 007 or drone trailer people, so my intuition is that the system is more likely to look like a hearbeat sensor attachment than a cloud based offering.
      - snakeyjake 2y ago
        That's another option. Plausible, even. The range would be very limited. But we both know what everyone thinks is happening.
      - 2y ago

It is inappropriate to assert that a capability from 2003, used against what were almost certainly Nokia x100-series GSM phones, will still work against devices in 2025.

autoexec 2y ago

Why should anyone think that if the NSA was backdooring phones in 2003 they wouldn't be doing the same thing in 2025?

snakeyjake 2y ago
Why should anyone think that if the NSA was brute forcing DES in 2003 they wouldn't be doing the same thing to AES256 in 2025?
- autoexec 2y ago
  brute forcing AES256 would require computing power that, as far as we know, the NSA doesn't have. That's a very different situation than the NSA being able to force the hand of the extremely small number of US companies who are legally able to produce the baseband chipsets found in every single cell phone. All the NSA has to do is hand a single national security letter to Qualcomm and they'd be able to backdoor half of the entire market. That's just the hardware. To backdoor the software they only need to knock on the doors of two corporations.

numpad0 2y ago

By September 2004, a new NSA technique enabled the agency to find cellphones even when they were turned off. JSOC troops called this "The Find," and it gave them thousands of new targets, including members of a burgeoning al-Qaeda-sponsored insurgency in Iraq, according to members of the unit. Sounds more like a radar metal detector sort of thing than phone hacking.

autoexec 2y ago
My guess is that they used bluetooth beacons. Google decided to get into the action themselves with Android 15, but that's just counting what's built into the OS, not the chipsets themselves. https://techbriefly.com/2024/03/15/android-15-powered-off-finding/ https://techbriefly.com/2024/03/15/android-15-powered-off-fi...
- snakeyjake 2y ago
  It was not common for the low-end phones of the type used by Iraqi insurgents in 2003 to be equipped with Bluetooth. Remember the "NSA can track phones when turned off" was from 2003. Try to remember 2003, then adjust your memories to match the reality for an impoverished Iraqi. My guess is that because they controlled the cellular network they pushed out an OTA firmware that made it so the phones didn't actually turn off but went into one of the ARM7TDMI's low power modes where it would wake up periodically and ping a tower before going back to sleep without turning on the screen. Those modes used so little power you wouldn't notice a difference in overall battery life. This would be trivially detectable by any party with a $10 SDR dongle in 2025.
  - numpad0 2y ago
    Or it could be a radar that resonate with common GSM filter circuitries or Nokia BL-4C or something like that. Quoted problem definition is "find cellphones even when they were turned off", not "locate" or "track" "a phone" or "user turns off". It's also supposedly something US JSOC is involved with, which is more like IRL Call of Duty group of people than black suited 007 or drone trailer people, so my intuition is that the system is more likely to look like a hearbeat sensor attachment than a cloud based offering.
    - snakeyjake 2y ago
      That's another option. Plausible, even. The range would be very limited. But we both know what everyone thinks is happening.
    - 2y ago