The congressman didn’t have to fall for social engineering or accept a text with an attachment all Nohl and his team needed was the phone number of the iPhone Lieu was using.Īlthough “some US carriers are easier to access through SS7 than others,” and the cellular phone trade association told 60 Minutes that “all US cellphone networks were secure,” the hackers were able to intercept and record the congressman’s calls, read his texts, view his contacts and track his location even if GPS location services were turned off. He’s no technical illiterate either he has a computer science degree from Stanford and serves on the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Information Technology. Some people believe the SS7 flaw has never been fixed “because the location tracking and call bugging capacity has been widely exploited by intelligence services for espionage.” Yet if intelligence agencies don’t want the flaw fixed because they can abuse it for spying, to glean valuable intel from targets, then Congressman Ted Lieu said those people should absolutely “be fired.”Ĭongressman Lieu agreed to use an iPhone supplied by 60 Minutes even though he knew it would be hacked. Manipulate.” Karsten Nohl of SRLabs also presented that year before releasing “ SnoopSnitch.” You may remember other times when Nohl revealed vulnerabilities which affected millions of phones. Then again, some companies sell “the ability to track your phone number wherever you go with a precision of up to 50 meters” as researcher Tobias Engel pointed out during the 2014 Chaos Communication Congress presentation “ SS7: Locate.

Granted, most people would not be targeted by this type of attack.

Security researchers have been warning about SS7 protocol flaws for years. It is also the network that allows phones to roam.” Billions of calls and text messages travel through its arteries daily. Phone companies use SS7 to exchange billing information. “The SS7 network is the heart of the worldwide mobile phone system.

If you use a mobile phone, then you use Signaling System Seven, or SS7 “Every person with a cellphone needs SS7 to call or text each other,” 60 Minutes explained.

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