6 ms·

Just wanted to advertise that the EFF recently released an open source tool for detecting cell-site simulators. The hardware is like $20 and it's pretty easy to

• jimt1234 1y ago
  I watched the presentation on Rayhunter at Defcon. Amazing stuff. Major kudos to the team.
• boston_clone 1y ago
  exactly what I'm looking for - much appreciated!!!
• perihelions 1y ago
  I wouldn't put it past the US to coerce Microsoft into injecting malicious payloads into these types of projects. EFF is putting complete trust in Microsoft's infrastructure: there's no out-of-band verification not served up by Microsoft itself (is there? It's just GitHub.com's TLS, and in-band SHA-1 hashes stored in the repo itself, which Microsoft controls; it can serve whatever bytes it wants, or different bytes on different requests...) Microsoft has billions of dollars in US intelligence-cloud contracts and should leap at a chance to get an edge in on those. They've done things like this before; they provided incredible (and illegal!) cooperation with the NSA back at the time of the Snowden Leaks[0]. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-... ("Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages" (2013))
  • throw0101d 1y ago
    > I wouldn't put it past the US to coerce Microsoft into injecting malicious payloads into these types of projects. EFF is putting complete trust in Microsoft's infrastructure: there's no out-of-band verification not served up by Microsoft itself Isn't a git commit trail basically a Merkle tree of checksums? If any developer tried to do a pull or fetch they'd suddenly get a bunch of strange commit messages, wouldn't they? Also: code signing is / can become a thing.
    • RS-232 1y ago
      Technically a Merkle DAG
      • goku12 1y ago
        Both are correct. The commit history is a Merkle DAG. The tree under each commit is a Merkle tree.
    • some_furry 1y ago
      > Also: code signing is / can become a thing. To that end, I started a project last month so that code signing can be done in multiple geographical locations at once: https://github.com/soatok/freeon https://github.com/soatok/freeon
    • therein 1y ago
      GP was probably referring to the binary releases on the GitHub repo.
    • perihelions 1y ago
      I don't know why you'd trust a checksum structure your adversary has complete control over. That Merkle tree prevents the naive case where the adversary tries to serve a version of a repo, to a client who already has an older version, differing in a part the client already has. (The part the client has local checksums for). They shouldn't do that. The git client tells the server what commits it doesn't have, so this is simple to check. Code signing could be a safeguard if people did it, but here they don't so it's moot. I found no mention of a signing key in this repo's docs. The checksum tree could be a useful audit if there were a transparency log somewhere that git tools automatically checked against, but there isn't so it's moot. We put full trust in Microsoft's versions. Lots of things could be helpful, but here and now in front of us is a source tree fully in Microsoft's control, with no visible safeguards against Microsoft doing something evil to it. Just like countless others. It's the default state of trust today.
      • marginalia_nu 1y ago
  • aduffy 1y ago
    You’re welcome to read the code yourself once you check it out, it’s not very big. Supply chain attacks are a thing but I don’t think this is one.
  • untitaker_ 1y ago
    I don't think there are many options to host sourcecode and binaries in a way that is safe against an adversary like the US, and especially in such a way that technically illiterate users are protected. Because you'd have to assume that CAs are not off-limits either then.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• anonymousiam 1y ago
  So does the EFF detector discriminate between Stingrays that are operating legally and those that are operating illegally? I wonder what their lawyers think of this. https://bja.ojp.gov/program/it/privacy-civil-liberties/authorities/statutes/1285 https://bja.ojp.gov/program/it/privacy-civil-liberties/autho...
  • aduffy 1y ago
    There is nothing wrong with running a receive-only hotspot. Not sure what you’re implying here.
  • like_any_other 1y ago
    If you have any precedent or ruling indicating that it is illegal for Americans to check for the presence of surveillance, please present it. Otherwise, I'm not aware of any duty of private citizens to remain willfully blind to their government's actions.
  • nxobject 1y ago
    Should it?
  • trympet 1y ago
    lol spot the fed
• EvanAnderson 1y ago
  Discussion about Rayhunter from 6 mos. ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43283917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43283917
• junebash 1y ago
  Would be a shame if someone used this to track down the ICE towers and vandalize them.
  • Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
    This "shame" is/would be a badge of honor, my friend.
    • dylan604 1y ago
      This shame feels like something that would get one extraordinarily renditioned to some black site where nobody would ever know about the shame
      • th0ma5 1y ago
        True, but at least we know who was right.
      • sho_hn 1y ago
        PSA: If you have to worry about your government taking people away to some black site, things have gotten pretty bad.
        • dragonwriter 1y ago
          PSA: Things have indeed gotten pretty bad, which is also why were are discussing tech to detect (and some are discussing the possibility of countering) elements of the forces doing the disappearances.
    • dredmorbius 1y ago
      ThatsThePoint.jpg
  • dylan604 1y ago
    For $20, it's cheap enough to add to a drone for a targeting purpose
  • 1y ago
• riedel 1y ago
  IMSI catchers have been popular by police all over the world. Here are some other tools [0] [1]. Edit: Interesting also the collection of network security via gsmmap [2] [0] https://gitweb.stoutner.com/?p=PrivacyCell.git;a=summary https://gitweb.stoutner.com/?p=PrivacyCell.git;a=summary [1] https://github.com/srlabs/snoopsnitch https://github.com/srlabs/snoopsnitch [2] https://gsmmap.org/ https://gsmmap.org/
• dang 1y ago
  Related: Rayhunter – Rust tool to detect cell site simulators on an orbic mobile hotspot - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43283917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43283917 - March 2025 (23 comments)
• HumblyTossed 1y ago
  I don’t know why your cellphone can’t do this. For example, It “knows” which towers are around your home. If all the sudden there’s a new one, pop up an alert.
  • nobody9999 1y ago
    I use Network Cell Info Lite[0] for this purpose. Sadly, it's only available in the Google/Apple stores (if anyone knows of a similar tool that's available elsewhere, I'd love to hear about it!) It allows me to locate the "cell towers" I'm connecting to and that are nearby, as well as the devices around me, and will map them for me. In fact, several years ago, I noted a brand spanking new "cell tower a block or so away (this is in NYC) that appeared to be in the street(!). It stayed there for a couple weeks and then was gone. It sure seemed like it was an IMSI catcher[1]. It's not directly the feature set you suggest, but can certainly be used to identify the towers near you -- and any new ones that might "pop up." [0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wilysis.cellinfolite&hl=en-US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wilysis.ce... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI-catcher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI-catcher Edit: Another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45189302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45189302 ) mentioned snoopsnitch (https://github.com/srlabs/snoopsnitch https://github.com/srlabs/snoopsnitch ) and other tools which, apparently can do similar (and more apropos to the topic at hand) things as Network Cell Info Lite.