The mainstream media is covering this (ABC covered this topic a few days ago as well: <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-16/metadata-retention-privacy-phone-will-ockenden/6694152" rel="nofollow">http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-16/metadata-retention-pri...</a>)<p>But nobody is doing anything. Nobody is making noise. Young people (and I feel old for saying this) accept this as the norm. Bleh
We've had geeks uncover vulnerabilities of GSM and SS7 in Slovenia since 2012: <a href="https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fslo-tech.com%2Fclanki%2F12003%2F&edit-text=" rel="nofollow">https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...</a><p>Last year a student discovered that Slovenian military and police communications system TETRA isn't configured to encrypt: <a href="https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fpodcrto.si%2Fpolicisti-kazensko-preganjajo-studenta-ki-je-razkril-varnostne-ranljivosti-tetre%2F" rel="nofollow">https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u...</a><p>The official response was to terrorize and prosecute, even in cases of responsible disclosure. Of course, it's impossible for them to fix issues that arise from insecure design, but they also seem to be ignorant of the Streisand effect.<p>As somebody else commented, we have yet to reach the tipping point, when general public becomes concerned with the privacy of mobile networks. Mainstream TV shows like this one might bring that moment closer. I just hope they do enough fear-mongering before deadly crime happens, or people gradually accept lack of privacy as the norm. The former is tragic, and the latter paves the way for oppression.
Having a little bit of experience in the telco industry, I could really say a lot of this topic even without knowing the details of the hacks.<p>For instance on the IMSI catcher, from what I understood they are a form of MIM attack where a fake base station connect to your phone and forces it to switch to non-encrypted mode. Why non-encrypted mode exists? Well, in the past (20 years or more) encryption was expensive and base station huge and bulky, none believed it was a conceivable attack. So they introduced a signal to switch of encryption to increase capacity in emergency.<p>Now you could trick cellphone to switch to un-encrypted and intercept traffic. Why this vulnerability hasn't been closed? Many reasons, first of all even if base station are no longer configured to support this mode, they should accept unencrypted traffic for inter-operability and the same it's for phones. Furthermore, it makes a lot easier to implement devices like personal base station to enhance network coverage in buildings.<p>Also, there's the "next gen" bug. It is almost 8 years that telco company think about 4th gen technology, the LTE network and VoLTE. This is an paper a totally new systems built with new technology and new threat model in mind. It is not perfect but far better. The issue? Implementation took longer than expected (as usual) and none want to spend money and time in fixing something that will be replaced. Sounds familiar?
Why the hell would you assume a system developed 40 years ago by phone companies would be secure? That's just insane. We knew this system had holes. Hell, there's even articles from last year which I found out using Wikipedia of all places (see below).<p>The way I see it is this: If it can have security holes, it will have them and they will be exploited. And what software cannot have security holes? By that line of reasoning, we reasonably should have known that such a system would have security holes that would be exploited when it was created in 1975. So this is hardly news.<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/for-sale-systems-that-can-secretly-track-where-cellphone-users-go-around-the-globe/2014/08/24/f0700e8a-f003-11e3-bf76-447a5df6411f_story.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/for-sale-...</a><p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/12/18/german-researchers-discover-a-flaw-that-could-let-anyone-listen-to-your-cell-calls-and-read-your-texts/" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/12/18...</a>
Worth watching the CCC talk <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oCOdGpXvZY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oCOdGpXvZY</a> Personally, finding 'holes' in GSM/3G is a fruitless task, because they are SIGINT enabled as the default. Finding holes in deliberately weakened systems makes you look clever, but you're only part of the wider problem of legacy systems that are deliberately kept online because of arcane lawful interception 'laws' (they're not really laws, they're just one law for the police, and none for you).
So, the solution is to use encrypted voip and messaging services if you actually want security? I should start treating phone calls and texts the same way I treat email?