(Newswire.net — September 2, 2014) — Seventeen fake cell towers were discovered by users of the CryptoPhone 500, one of several ultra-secure handsets that have become available in the last couple of years, after an executive noticed his handset was “leaking” data regularly.
According to Les Goldsmith, the CEO of ESD America, he and his customers have created a map, indicating 17 different phony cell towers known as “interceptors,” detected by the CryptoPhone 500 around the United States during the month of July alone.
They can only be detected with specialized devices, such as the custom Android security OS used by CryptoPhone, which includes various security features – including “baseband attack detection.”
Interceptors appear like an ordinary tower to a typical phone. Once the phone connects with the interceptor, a variety of “over-the-air” attacks become possible, from eavesdropping on calls and texts to pushing spyware to the device.
Goldsmith mobile security team also found that the version of the Android OS that comes standard on the Samsung Galaxy SIII leaks data to parts unknown 80-90 times every hour.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean that the phone has been hacked,” Goldsmith says, “but the user can’t know whether the data is beaming out from a particular app, the OS, or an illicit piece of spyware”.
“Interceptor use in the US is much higher than people had anticipated,” Goldsmith says. “One of our customers took a road trip from Florida to North Carolina and he found 8 different interceptors on that trip. We even found one at South Point Casino in Las Vegas.”
What Goldsmith and his crew find suspicious is that a lot of these interceptors are right on top of US military bases. “Whose interceptor is it? Who are they, that’s listening to calls around military bases? The point is: we don’t really know whose they are,” said Goldsmith.
However, there are some folks that believe they know the answer. According to anonymous tech expert from Hacker News, there is nothing mysterious to this towers, it’s a Stingray phone tracker.
The Stingray is an IMSI-catcher with both passive (digital analyzer) and active (cell site simulator) capabilities. When operating in active mode, the device mimics a wireless carrier cell tower in order to force all nearby mobile phones and other cellular data devices to connect to it.
In active mode, the Stingray is capable of performing multiple operations upon a cellular device:
– Extracting stored data such as International Mobile Subscriber Identity (“IMSI”) numbers and Electronic Serial Number (“ESN”),
– Writing cellular protocol metadata to internal storage,
– Forcing an increase in signal transmission power
– Forcing an abundance of radio signals to be transmitted,
– Tracking and locating the cellular device user,
– Conducting a denial-of-service attack,
– Encryption key extraction and interception of communications content
The Stingray’s passive mode operations include
– Conducting base station surveys, which is the process of using over-the-air signals to identify legitimate cell sites and precisely map their coverage areas,
– Radio jamming for either general denial of service purposes, or to aid in active mode protocol rollback attacks.
The Stingray family of devices can be mounted in vehicles, on airplanes, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as carried by hand.
Initially developed for the military and intelligence community by the Harris Corporation, the Stingray and similar Harris devices are in widespread use by local and state law enforcement agencies across the United States.