Defcon 18 - Practical Cellphone Spying - Chris Paget - Part.mov

killab666611 HN recommenders · 2014–2022
217K views · talk · dated · Uploaded 2010-12-12

Chris Paget's DEF CON 18 talk on practical cellphone spying, showing how GSM traffic can be intercepted with a fake base station. It covers 2G interception and the weaknesses of cellular networks.

HN points to it as a worrying but technically solid explanation of how cell interception works, even if the talk is old.

Watch on YouTube

4 comments from Hacker News

@JoeAltmaier2014 · in “California Governor Signs Law Requiring a ‘Kill Switch’ on Smartphones”

And there's a much simpler, regulation-free way to do this anyway: [VIDEO] So this bill is probably just what it seems - a way to curb cellphone pilferage.

@Sir_Cmpwn2015 · in “Cell-Site Simulators Aren’t Secret Anymore”

[VIDEO] I watched this DEFCON talk a while ago. Not sure if it's still relevant, but it is quite worrying.

@mey2015 · in “Cell-Site Simulators Aren’t Secret Anymore”

I don't have the details in mind but checkout [LINK] Since digital, handsets validate the tower they are talking too, this info is stored on sim or device depending on model. So to intercept 2g, there is some work See [VIDEO]

@dontbenebby2022 · in “AirPods sound quality is crap in calls”

Worse since they're expensive and pushed by the manufacturer to the point you cannot physically plug a 3.5mm male plug into a female adapter on the newer phones -- you are forced to buy a dongle. Meanwhile the intelligence agencies of the world siphon up signals like hungry hungry hippos because SDRs are cheap and ubiquitious, when ten-ish years ago they were poorly documented, expensive, and the encryption schemes used strong enough using 4g over wifi was a very practical security decision. Here's an old talk that references someone's deadname with good technical information: [VIDEO] And a more recent talk on similar subjects: [LINK] | [LINK] (Apologies to Kristin, if they see this: I had trouble locating JUST the slides, not audio or video, of the DC18 talk or I would have simply linked the slides.)

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