Mysterious Fake Cellphone Towers Are Intercepting Calls All Over The US

Considering the part of the article I highlighted, I suspect this is a concerted high tech espionage effort against us, hence my reason for putting it in this forum.

Mysterious Fake Cellphone Towers Are Intercepting Calls All Over The US

September 3, 2014

Seventeen fake cellphone towers were discovered across the U.S. last week, according to a report in Popular Science.

Rather than offering you cellphone service, the towers appear to be connecting to nearby phones, bypassing their encryption, and either tapping calls or reading texts.

Les Goldsmith, the CEO of ESD America, used ESD's CryptoPhone 500 to detect 17 bogus cellphone towers. ESD is a leading American defense and law enforcement technology provider based in Las Vegas.

With most phones, these fake communication towers are undetectable. But not for the CryptoPhone 500, a customized Android device that is disguised as a Samsung Galaxy S III but has highly advanced encryption.

Goldsmith told Popular Science: "Interceptor use in the U.S. is much higher than people had anticipated. One of our customers took a road trip from Florida to North Carolina and he found eight different interceptors on that trip. We even found one at South Point Casino in Las Vegas.”

The towers were found in July, but the report implied that there may have been more out there.

Although it is unclear who owns the towers, ESD found that several of them were located near U.S. military bases.

"Whose interceptor is it? Who are they, that's listening to calls around military bases? Is it just the U.S. military, or are they foreign governments doing it? The point is: we don't really know whose they are," Goldsmith said to Popular Science.

It's probably not the NSA — that agency can tap all it wants without the need for bogus towers, VentureBeat reported:

Not the NSA, cloud security firm SilverSky CTO/SVP Andrew Jaquith told us. “The NSA doesn’t need a fake tower,” he said. “They can just go to the carrier” to tap your line.


ComputerWorld points out that the fake towers give themselves away by crushing down the performance of your phone from 4G to 2G while the intercept is taking place. So if you see your phone operating on a slow download signal while you're near a military base ... maybe make that call from somewhere else.

In an amazing coincidence, police departments in a handful of U.S. cities have been operating "Stingray" or "Hailstorm" towers, which — you guessed it — conduct surveillance on mobile phone activity. They do that by jamming mobile phone signals, forcing phones to drop down from 4G and 3G network bands to the older, more insecure 2G band.

When I worked in DC I could use a spectrum analyzer and "break into" phones. I could turn them on and off, I could open the mics, I could close the mics, I could even just listen in.

That was all before someone "listened" in to some congressman and a law was passed banning the ability to listen to cell calls.

Now... tell me... who is exempt from all the laws in the country if they want to be?

Congress, and variously military units, police, CIA, FBI, NSA....

Now WHO could POSSIBLY be listening in to calls NEAR MILITARY BASES?


Well, perhaps these cell towers belong NOT to the US government, but to the Russian or Chinese Government... No one ever think of that?

As the article states, the FedGov already has the means to get what they want direct from the carriers so they have no need for this tech.

That combined with the fact that there are so many near military bases leads me to believe this is foreign, likely Russian and/or Chinese, effort to glean information from these bases.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by American Patriot

The General is a pretty quiet guy, doesn't seem usually to go out of his way to make statements like those he's now made.

I suspect something BIG is coming to the shores of America. They are already here. Be prepared. Be ready. Keep armed. Keep a clear head.

If you or your loved ones are affected/involved by terrorists, do what you must to survive. Do NOT let them kill you if you can stop them.

Kill them first.

Folks - we as Americans are now at war. This isn't any longer about the US Government "declaring war". War HAS BEEN DECLARED on YOU.

That means - you are not an unwilling, unwitting, not-wanting-to-be-there fighter in the war on Terror. Unfortunately, innocent people always die because they aren't ready for what's coming.

Be ready, be prepared.... be safe.

I'll point out that we here at TAA have pointed out, over and over the ability of random people to walk into a mall and start shooting in a coordinated effort to terrorize and immobilize America.

Airplanes are safer now, but it could still happen again.

Schools have been attacked already here - and each time it has happened, Americans have been denied access to the facts behind the shootings, the people involved and the depth this goes. A 19 year old kid who is a loner doesn't suddenly shoot up a kindergarten class without help, without drugs, without brainwashing of some kind.

Be ALERT!

DEFCON-1 Readiness! Shocking Clear and Present Danger! Intelligence on ISIS Terror Threat on AMERICA! ISIS a Brutal and Certain Threat! (Video) VITAL Info Must, MUST See!!

Sunday, August 24, 2014 10:14

(Before It's News)

http://beforeitsnews.com/contributor...ita%281%29.jpg


SHOCKING Intelligence on ISIS Terror Threat on AMERICA!

Aug 24 2014

Saturday on Fox News Channel’s “America’s News HQ,” network military analyst Ret. Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney told host Uma Pemmaraju that in order to address the current threat ISIS posseses, the Untied States should “go to DEFCON 1, our highest state of readiness and be prepared as we lead up to 9/11,” because he warned “we may even see a 9/11/14.” Read more

This is updated intelligence concerning a very possible terrorist attack upon the United States to happen this year, on that infamous date 9-11-14 involving:

- 103 Malls across America
- Missing Malaysia Jetliner
- ISIS
- Open Border

Ret. Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney & Dr. Jim Garrow give chilling updates to Planned Attacks on America

For MORE on this planned attack, and officials at the White House going public with it, stating that ISIS has the funding and the CAPABILITY to do precisely as threated click here; VITAL info!

Are you prepared?

Listen to the video: http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-T...9-11-14-Coming

---

Maybe they are concerned about those in the Military and elsewhere still willing to honor their oaths to defend the Constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic, that have been strategizing the downfall of the United States for decades.

Obama: The head of the ISIS snake

Exclusive: Erik Rush calls BHO 'a well-placed saboteur representing malignant interests'

Published: 15 hours ago

Erik Rush About | Email | Archive

Last week, I detailed the conflicting signals and statements to which Americans were being exposed by the press and government officials relative to the threat posed by the so-called Islamic State (formerly the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS). This week, the news cycle has been dominated by the Obama administration’s unfathomable lack of resolve with respect to ISIS, particularly the president’s laconic admission last week that the White House did not have a strategy to combat the terror group.

One of the criticisms the administration has faced is the president having been highly dismissive of ISIS, at one point calling them the “JV team” among terrorist groups. Outrage on the part of Americans and world leaders came to a head on Aug. 19 when American journalist James Foley was beheaded by ISIS. Video footage of the murder was widely distributed by the group.

Then, on Sept. 2, new video was released by ISIS; Steven Sotloff, an American journalist being held by the terror group since last year, was shown being beheaded by a black-robed militant. As in response to nearly all of the disturbing advances, threats and atrocities concerning Islamic terrorists, once again, Obama’s response was as tepid as ever.

As worldwide concern over ISIS has grown, experts and world leaders have admonished one another as well as America that ISIS is currently the greatest threat to peace globally, and possibly one of the greatest threats to peace the world has ever seen. This week, the British government raised the country’s terror threat level to “Severe,” the second-highest of five potential levels. In a speech to the British House of Commons, Prime Minister David Cameron proposed sweeping new anti-terror legislation to mitigate the threat to Britain from ISIS.

Now we have learned (as reported Tuesday by Fox News) that President Obama was given “detailed and specific intelligence” about the rise of ISIS as part of his daily briefing for at least a year before the group seized vast swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq this summer.

According to the Fox News source, there was no mistaking the signals, or the fact that the threat posed by ISIS was building toward that which we are now witnessing.

To add insult to injury, after this latest atrocity, Americans were treated to Press Secretary Josh Earnest’s mealymouthed claims that ISIS is a group the administration had been “looking at for a long time” and State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki’s reluctance to “put any labels” on Steve Sotloff’s beheading.

This would be comical if not for the real human suffering involved.

Republican lawmakers and assorted conservative pundits continue to refer to President Obama as “disengaged,” “ineffectual,” or “in denial,” and California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein recently deemed him possibly “too cautious” regarding ISIS. These lukewarm estimations and face-saving maneuvers have become tedious.

It is high time that those in government who have any desire whatsoever to preserve this nation as an ongoing concern take stock of the abundance of evidence which proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the individual representing himself as Barack Hussein Obama is responsible for the resurgence of Islamic militancy in the Middle East, and ISIS in particular.

As uncomfortable for them as it may be, they must come to grips with the fact that Obama is a well-placed saboteur representing malignant interests, enemies both foreign and domestic, that have been strategizing the downfall of the United States for decades.

In May of this year, Obama named the Desert Peaks National Monument in New Mexico a federally designated monument. Setting aside this land with an executive order under the Antiquities Act of 1906, the nearly half million acres bordering the Mexican state of Chihuahua is now off-limits to all but foot traffic. Potential for the incursion of malefactors in that area is enormous; not just an efficient and effective route for small bands of drug smugglers or gangs, it now amounts to a protected access for potentially large sorties onto the U.S. soil.

In the context of what I have postulated here, why might Obama do this?

Let’s forget for a moment the possibility of a terror cell executing a Nairobi mall-style attack or detonating a dirty bomb somewhere in Middle America. Picture 100 malls or elementary schools across the U.S. laid siege simultaneously, two or more full-fledged thermonuclear devices detonated in American cities, or a few high-sensitivity military bases taken over by terrorists. Consider that these forces would have the training and weaponry to suit the job, as well as the intelligence necessary to give them a far better than even chance of success – all provided by our own government.

Bear in mind that the Desert Peaks phenomenon is but one instance in which Obama has left America vulnerable; there are others we’ve been made aware of, and probably still others we don’t yet know about.

If this sounds preposterous, just remember that those of us who warned against the rise of an Islamist caliphate were mocked only a year ago, and now one exists, courtesy of Barack Hussein Obama.

Whether Obama intends to seize absolute power via martial law after a comprehensive White House-orchestrated terrorist strike or use his jihadi army to aid in pacifying an unsuspecting American populace matters little. The bottom line is that the decisive measures needed to defeat ISIS and to protect American citizens from them will never be taken by this president, and it should be obvious as to why. This nation now faces extreme and unprecedented crises, and apart from an Act of God, they will only be resolved through extreme and unprecedented measures.

The removal of the Obama regime, extrication of Islamists from our government, the closure of our southern border, drastically heightened security procedures and the summary expulsion or prosecution of anyone who even remotely resembles an Islamist or who supports that worldview are now absolute imperatives.

So, some are postulating Obama is a lying snake? Oh, we already knew that.

That he's sympathetic to Muslims? We knew that.

This President hides a lot by saying too much, he can't focus, he doesn't have a "strategy" then he says "it's manageable". He can't make hard words work, only soft words.

ANYONE who goes to a writing class - and I MEAN ANYONE - will be told their writing sucks if they use "soft words".

If these towers are there by a foreign government, it IS an act of war. The towers should be removed immediately, TODAY. Shut them down.

If these towers are put there by terrorists or other spies, they must be removed, IMMEDIATELY, TODAY. Shut them down.

If these towers are put there by the Federal Government, they are breaking their own laws against we, the people. They must be removed, IMMEDIATELY, TODAY. Shut them down.

If these towers can't be identified as to the owners, they must be removed, IMMEDIATELY, TODAY. Shut them down.

I can't think of ANY reason to keep them up and online. I can't imagine that someone put them there to "help" anyone. They must be removed, IMMEDIATELY, TODAY. Shut them down.

Who is putting up ‘interceptor’ cell towers? The mystery deepens

http://venturebeat.files.wordpress.c...&h=9999&crop=0

Above: ESD America's map of the interceptors discovered so far
Image Credit: ESD America


September 2, 2014 2:58 PM

Mysterious “interceptor” cell towers in the USA are grabbing phone calls — but they’re not part of the phone networks. And, two experts told VentureBeat today, the towers don’t appear to be projects of the National Security Agency (NSA).


The towers were revealed by Les Goldsmith to Popular Science last week. He’s CEO of ESD America, which builds the super-secure Cryptophone 500 for clients that need the military-grade security and can handle the phone’s estimated $3,500 price tag.


In the course of testing the phone, Goldsmith’s team discovered the existence of phone cell towers that intercept a call and hand it off to the real network — allowing the tower to listen in or load spyware to the mobile device.


In July, ESD America identified 17 of the towers, but now it has increased that outed inventory to 19. On its Facebook page, ESD America points out that an interceptor “doesn’t necessarily need to be a[n] actual cell tower,” but could simply be the listening/call handling technology sitting somewhere.


Who is installing and managing these interceptors?


Not the NSA, cloud security firm SilverSky CTO/SVP Andrew Jaquith told us. “The NSA doesn’t need a fake tower,” he said. “They can just go to the carrier” to tap your line.
“I would agree with that,” Goldsmith told us. But then who?


They could be from perhaps law enforcement agencies or the military, he suggested. A number of these towers are around military bases, although they’re also found in other locations, including the vicinity of the South Point Casino in Las Vegas.


The discovery “appears to confirm real-world use of techniques that have been highlighted by researchers for years,” said Stephen Ellis, manager of cyber threat intelligence at security firm iSIGHT Partners. While noting that his company “cannot confirm the accuracy of this reporting without further information,” Ellis told us that iSIGHT is “highly confident that we have observed real-world use of this technique in support of another of its uses – cyber crime [for] financial gain.”


“We have observed and reported on cases in other parts of the world where actors are known to have set up fake base stations to send spoofed SMS messages,” Ellis said, “possibly to send spam or to direct unsuspecting victims to malicious websites.”


The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced last month that it is launching an investigation into the use of cell network interceptors by criminal gangs and foreign intelligence.


We asked Goldsmith if he could be mistaken about the towers. Perhaps they are just commercial ones that seem unusual?


“We can definitely tell” that they’re non-network towers, he said, by analysis of the infrastructure. These phony towers, without names as normal towers have, insist to your phone that they must handle the call and then trick the phone into turning off its normal encryption.


Such a tower tells you that “none of your towers are currently available,” Goldsmith told us. It says, “‘I’m your tower.’


“If you wanted to listen to a phone call,” he said, “this would be the easy way.”

???

Cities scramble to upgrade “stingray” tracking as end of 2G network looms

Oakland is latest city confirmed seeking Hailstorm upgrade, targeting 4G LTE.

by Cyrus Farivar - Sept 1 2014, 8:35am MST

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-conten..._b-640x426.jpg

OAKLAND, CA—Documents released last week by the City of Oakland reveal that it is one of a handful of American jurisdictions attempting to upgrade an existing cellular surveillance system, commonly known as a stingray. The Oakland Police Department, the nearby Fremont Police Department, and the Alameda County District Attorney jointly applied for a grant from the Department of Homeland Security to "obtain a state-of-the-art cell phone tracking system," the records show.
Stingray is a trademark of its manufacturer, publicly traded defense contractor Harris Corporation, but "stingray" has also come to be used as a generic term for similar devices.
The cellular surveillance system's upgrade, known as Hailstorm, is necessary. Existing stingray devices will no longer work in a few years as older phone networks get turned off.
According to Harris' annual report, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week, the company profited over $534 million in its latest fiscal year, the most since 2011.
"We do not comment on solutions we may or may not proivde to classified Department of Defense or law enforcement agencies," Jim Burke, a spokesman for Harris, told Ars.
Other locales known to be in the process of related federally-funded upgrades include Tacoma, Wash.; Baltimore, Md.; Chesterfield, Va.; Sunrise, Fla.; and Oakland County, Mich. There are likely many more, but such purchases are often shrouded in secrecy.
Relatively little is known about how stingrays are precisely used by law enforcement agencies nationwide, although documents have surfaced showing how they have been purchased and used in some limited instances. Last year, Ars reported on leaked documents showing the existence of a body-worn stingray. In 2010, Kristin Paget famously demonstrated a homemade device built for just $1,500. Worse still, cops have lied to courts about the use of such technology. Not only can stingrays be used to determine a phone’s location, but they can also intercept calls and text messages.
Robert Shipway, of the Alameda County Public Defender’s Office, said he was not aware of their described use during the process of criminal discovery in county prosecutions in recent years. That could mean that local law enforcement and prosecutors are concealing or obscuring their use.
"[The upgrade] has not been fulfilled," Michael O’Connor, an assistant district attorney in Alameda County, told Ars. "It has not been approved and it has not been purchased."
He also noted that the county had applied for a similar grant to conduct an upgrade in 2012, but that application was denied, and he did not know why.
O’Connor also said that his office was currently in the process of gathering more relevant documents and would publicly release them in September. According to the newly released documents, the entire upgrade will cost $460,000—including $205,000 in total Homeland Security grant money, and $50,000 from the Oakland Police Department (OPD). Neither the OPD nor the mayor's office immediately responded to requests for comment.
Not your grandfather's stingray

One of the primary ways that stingrays operate is by taking advantage of a design feature in any phone available today. When 3G or 4G networks are unavailable, the handset will drop down to the older 2G network. While normally that works as a nice last-resort backup to provide service, 2G networks are notoriously insecure. Handsets operating on 2G will readily accept communication from another device purporting to be a valid cell tower, like a stingray. So the stingray takes advantage of this feature by jamming the 3G and 4G signals, forcing the phone to use a 2G signal. Christopher Soghoian, a technologist with the American Civil Liberties Union and a close observer of stingray technology, told Ars that little is known about the upgrades Hailstorm offers.
"The only difference that we know about is the 4G," he said, citing a purchase order from the Drug Enforcement Agency first unearthed by The News Tribune in Tacoma. That March 2014 document states: "Stingray II to Hailstrom Upgrade, etc. The Hailstorm Upgrade is necessary for the Stingray system to track 4G LTE Phones"
He explained that the new upgrade will continue to provide existing surveillance capability even after major cellular providers turn off support for the legacy 2G network, which is expected to occur in upcoming years. In 2012, AT&T announced that it would be shutting down its 2G network in 2017. Without the forced downgrade to 2G, a 4G phone targeted by a stingray would not be susceptible to the same types of interception at present, but it likely would still be susceptible to location tracking.
"Presumably, at some point after, new phones sold by AT&T will no longer support 2G," Soghoian added. "Once new phones stop working with 2G, Stingrays won't work any more. At that point, the Hailstorm will be the only way."
Thomas Pica, a Verizon spokesman, told Ars that the company's network would be operational "through the end of the decade." T-Mobile nor Sprint did not respond to Ars' request for comment.
"These things aren't cheap," Soghoian added. "My guess is that there are law enforcement agencies around the country who are frantically trying to find the money because at some point in the future, in the next two to five years, their existing stingrays are going to stop working and my guess is that they're really worried about that."
Other firms that make related devices include Martone Radio Technology, located 25 miles from Oakland, in San Ramon, Calif. Martone also did not respond to Ars' request for comment. Martone advertises 4G LTE interception on its site.
For now, 4G LTE stingray-like devices appear relatively rare.
"We haven't seen any 4G LTE IMSI catchers from any of the brochures from companies that we've picked up yet, so this will be the first," Eric King, the deputy director of Privacy International, told Ars, using another name for stingrays.
His London-based organization, in conjunction with WikiLeaks and other groups, released the Spy Files in 2011, which includes many corporate documents illustrating telecom interception and surveillance.
"It isn't actually invasive at all."

Local law enforcement and federal agencies have taken extraordinary steps to conceal their use and have been reticent to disclose detailed information about their use. "Once that's disclosed then the targets of the technology will know how to avoid it," O’Connor, the assistant district attorney, told Ars. "Once the bad guys understand how to beat it then they will. It's not like people are running around looking through peepholes. If I told you that I have a blue truck that I'm going to park in front of your house and told you I was going to watch you go out of your house then you're not going to come out of your house. It isn't actually invasive at all, but I can't tell you any more than I just told you without compromising the technology."
"It can't easily be resolved—the public's right to know, the Fourth Amendment rights of people who might be subject to this kind of analysis and the needs of law enforcement to keep sources confidential especially in a day and age when the bad guys have acquired considerable technology that is turned against good guys."
In nearby San Francisco, the police also refused to provide any stingray-related documents last week to Ars as part of another public records request.
In August, the Federal Communications Commission said it will investigate the "illicit and unauthorized use" of stingrays.
The newly published letter from FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) states that Wheeler has created a task force that recently took "immediate steps to combat the illicit and unauthorized use of IMSI catchers. The mission of this task force is to develop concrete solutions to protect the cellular networks systemically from similar unlawful intrusions and interceptions."
As a result, one state lawmaker has even recently attempted to regulate the device’s use in the wake of the disclosure of the Hailstorm acquisition in Oakland County, Mich.
"The most frustrating part of this whole situation is that the county continually refuses to share information on what the technology does, while telling lawmakers and the public to just trust them," Michigan state representative Tom McMillin said in a statement in June 2014. "Among other things, this technology can mimic cell towers to collect data, and citizens wouldn’t have any way of knowing their privacy, or worse their rights, have been violated. To me, that runs into our constitutional rights."

Mysterious Phony Cell Towers Could Be Intercepting Your Calls

Every smart phone has a secondary OS, which can be hijacked by high-tech hackers


By Andrew Rosenblum


Posted 08.27.2014 at 1:00 pm



http://www.popsci.com/sites/popsci.c...?itok=GOLmPZXY Unencrypted Connection
Les Goldsmith



Like many of the ultra-secure phones that have come to market in the wake of Edward Snowden's leaks, the CryptoPhone 500, which is marketed in the U.S. by ESD America and built on top of an unassuming Samsung Galaxy SIII body, features high-powered encryption. Les Goldsmith, the CEO of ESD America, says the phone also runs a customized or "hardened" version of Android that removes 468 vulnerabilities that his engineering team team found in the stock installation of the OS.

His 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, Goldmsith 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. His clients want real security and control over their device, and have the money to pay for it.


To show what the CryptoPhone can do that less expensive competitors cannot, he points me to a map that he and his customers have created, indicating 17 different phony cell towers known as “interceptors,” detected by the CryptoPhone 500 around the United States during the month of July alone. (The map below is from August.)

Interceptors look to a typical phone like an ordinary tower. 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.


http://www.popsci.com/sites/popsci.c...?itok=B0X4ojFO August GSM Interceptor Map
ESD



“Interceptor use in the U.S. 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.”


Who is running these interceptors and what are they doing with the calls?


Who is running these interceptors and what are they doing with the calls? Goldsmith says we can’t be sure, but he has his suspicions.


“What we find suspicious is that a lot of these interceptors are right on top of U.S. military bases. So we begin to wonder – are some of them U.S. government interceptors? Or are some of them Chinese interceptors?” says Goldsmith. “Whose interceptor is it? Who are they, that's listening to calls around military bases? Is it just the U.S. military, or are they foreign governments doing it? The point is: we don't really know whose they are.”


http://www.popsci.com/sites/popsci.c...?itok=hkpUsJcf Ciphering Disabled
Les Goldsmith




Interceptors vary widely in expense and sophistication – but in a nutshell, they are radio-equipped computers with software that can use arcane cellular network protocols and defeat the onboard encryption. Whether your phone uses Android or iOS, it also has a second operating system that runs on a part of the phone called a baseband processor. The baseband processor functions as a communications middleman between the phone’s main O.S. and the cell towers. And because chip manufacturers jealously guard details about the baseband O.S., it has been too challenging a target for garden-variety hackers.


“The baseband processor is one of the more difficult things to get into or even communicate with,” says Mathew Rowley, a senior security consultant at Matasano Security. “[That’s] because my computer doesn't speak 4G or GSM, and also all those protocols are encrypted. You have to buy special hardware to get in the air and pull down the waves and try to figure out what they mean. It's just pretty unrealistic for the general community.”


But for governments or other entities able to afford a price tag of “less than $100,000,” says Goldsmith, high-quality interceptors are quite realistic. Some interceptors are limited, only able to passively listen to either outgoing or incoming calls. But full-featured devices like the VME Dominator, available only to government agencies, can not only capture calls and texts, but even actively control the phone, sending out spoof texts, for example. Edward Snowden revealed that the N.S.A. is capable of an over-the-air attack that tells the phone to fake a shut-down while leaving the microphone running, turning the seemingly deactivated phone into a bug. And various ethical hackers have demonstrated DIY interceptor projects, using a software programmable radio and the open-source base station software package OpenBTS – this creates a basic interceptor for less than $3,000. On August 11, the F.C.C. announced an investigation into the use of interceptors against Americans by foreign intelligence services and criminal gangs.

An “Over-the-Air” Attack Feels Like Nothing

Whenever he wants to test out his company’s ultra-secure smart phone against an interceptor, Goldsmith drives past a certain government facility in the Nevada desert. (To avoid the attention of the gun-toting counter-intelligence agents in black SUVs who patrol the surrounding roads, he won't identify the facility to Popular Science). He knows that someone at the facility is running an interceptor, which gives him a good way to test out the exotic “baseband firewall” on his phone. Though the baseband OS is a “black box” on other phones, inaccessible to manufacturers and app developers, patent-pending software allows the GSMK CryptoPhone 500 to monitor the baseband processor for suspicious activity.


So when Goldsmith and his team drove by the government facility in July, he also took a standard Samsung Galaxy S4 and an iPhone to serve as a control group for his own device.


”As we drove by, the iPhone showed no difference whatsoever. The Samsung Galaxy S4, the call went from 4G to 3G and back to 4G. The CryptoPhone lit up like a Christmas tree.”


Though the standard Apple and Android phones showed nothing wrong, the baseband firewall on the Cryptophone set off alerts showing that the phone’s encryption had been turned off, and that the cell tower had no name – a telltale sign of a rogue base station. Standard towers, run by say, Verizon or T-Mobile, will have a name, whereas interceptors often do not.


Some devices can not only capture calls and texts, but even actively control the phone and send spoof texts.


And the interceptor also forced the CryptoPhone from 4G down to 2G, a much older protocol that is easier to de-crypt in real-time. But the standard smart phones didn’t even show they’d experienced the same attack.


“If you've been intercepted, in some cases it might show at the top that you've been forced from 4G down to 2G. But a decent interceptor won't show that,” says Goldsmith.

“It'll be set up to show you [falsely] that you're still on 4G. You'll think that you're on 4G, but you're actually being forced back to 2G.”

So Do I Need One?

Though Goldsmith won’t disclose sales figures or even a retail price for the GSMK CryptoPhone 500, he doesn’t dispute an MIT Technology Review article from this past spring reporting that he produces about 400 phones per week for $3,500 each. So should ordinary Americans skip some car payments to be able to afford to follow suit?


It depends on what level of security you expect, and who you might reasonably expect to be trying to listen in, says Oliver Day, who runs Securing Change, an organization that provides security services to non-profits.


“There's this thing in our industry called “threat modeling,” says Day. “One of the things you learn is that you have to have a realistic sense of your adversary. Who is my enemy? What skills does he have? What are my goals in terms of security?”


If you’re not realistically of interest to the U.S. government and you never leave the country, then the CryptoPhone is probably more protection than you need. Goldsmith says he sells a lot of phones to executives who do business in Asia. The aggressive, sophisticated hacking teams working for the People’s Liberation Army have targeted American trade secrets, as well as political dissidents.


Day, who has written a paper about undermining censorship software used by the Chinese government, recommends people in hostile communications environments watch what they say over the phone and buy disposable “burner” phones that can be used briefly and then discarded.


“I'm not bringing anything into China that I'm not willing to throw away on my return trip,” says Day.


Goldsmith warns that a “burner phone” strategy can be dangerous. If Day were to call another person on the Chinese government’s watch list, his burner phone’s number would be added to the watch list, and then the government would watch to see who else he called. The CryptoPhone 500, in addition to alerting the user whenever it’s under attack, can “hide in plain sight” when making phone calls. Though it does not use standard voice-over-IP or virtual private network security tools, the CryptoPhone can make calls using just a WI-FI connection -- it does not need an identifiable SIM card. When calling over the Internet, the phone appears to eavesdroppers as if it is just browsing the Internet.

I think there is value in creating an App that allows you to identify towers and ONLY connect to known good towers.

For example...you set it to a learn mode and throughout the week you hit all your regular towers. Once done, you lock it down and if a rogue tower shows up, your phone ignores it.

Also interesting in the article above is that Stingray jams 3/4g to force the phone down to 2g.

It should be possible to block 2g connections and if nothing else alert you when you are connected via 2g.

I suppose you could look at your phone, but who is going to do that constantly

Truth is... I don't know - I have a BB.

Thing is, near where I work my phone jumps up and down in connectivity all the time. So - I have to wonder.

Interesting

Rumor Check: Those Fake Cellphone ‘Towers’ You’re Hearing About Aren’t Necessarily Towers at All

Sep. 4, 2014 12:22pm Jonathon M. Seidl
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A story has been taking the Internet by storm this week about an encrypted cellphone device that has uncovered 17 “fake” cell towers across America. There’s just one problem: the “towers” aren’t necessarily towers at all.
The story seems to originate from a Popular Science article last week titled, “Mysterious Phony Cell Towers Could Be Intercepting Your Calls.” It focused on how a fancy device called the CryptoPhone 500 (available for $3,500) can detect when your call has been routed through a “phony” tower. And in fact, the phone recently discovered “17 different phony cell towers known as ‘interceptors.’” The story then spread to an obscure site and beyond. But what the original article never makes clear is that the “interceptors” are not necessarily physical towers, and such devices have been known about for several years.
http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/u...rk-Office1.jpgA StingRay cellphone surveillance device. (Image source: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office)

In fact, TheBlaze has been reporting on interceptor devices that mimic towers since 2011, when our own Buck Sexton wrote about something known as a “Stingray” and its legality:

The Stingray is a generic term for devices that can track a cellphone’s location as long as it is turned on. As the Journal described its method of operation, the Stingray functions by:
“mimicking a cellphone tower, getting a phone to connect to it and measuring signals from the phone. It lets the stingray operator “ping,” or send a signal to, a phone and locate it as long as it is powered on.”
Law enforcement across the country does not have a standardized procedure for obtaining permission to use devices like the Stingray, though generally police agencies obtain a court order and not a search warrant, which would require a higher standard of proof.
This raises the question: should law enforcement be able to know exactly where you are without going before a judge to show probable cause?

TheBlaze TV’s Real News program continued debating the topic in February 2013 and TheBlaze has covered the Stingray numerous other times here, here, here and here. In fact, Elizabeth Kreft conducted a detailed interview this July with a security expert talking about how the Stingray (which is also a brand name in addition to the generic term) and another variation called the Hailstorm work, and why the public should know about them:

NF: These devices are pieces of physical equipment that police use themselves to track cellphones. It works by mimicking cell service providers’ cellphone towers and then sending out electronic signals that force phones — really trick phones — into reporting back their identifying information, including their electronic serial numbers and their location. A good way to describe this is that old kids pool game: so the cell site simulator will say “Marco,” and your cellphone says “Polo.”
EK: Ha. I want to laugh, but I’m too annoyed. So many ways for innocent Americans to be tracked. Now, some of these are carried and some are permanently fixed, right?
NF: One is a handheld model that is a little less powerful, others are vehicle-based that have stronger signals, some of them have directional antennas — but they all work in the same way. But there are several concerning things about how these work, much like cell tower dumps, they trigger every phone in the area — including phones of completely innocent bystanders — into reporting back their location information to the police.

This image and its caption sums it up well (don’t let the picture of the actual tower confuse you — look closely):
http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/u...ower-image.jpgThis graphic illustrates how a StingRay works. Signals from cellphones within the device’s radius are bounced to law enforcement. The information relayed may include names, phone numbers, locations, call records and even text messages. (Image source: KQED)

On Thursday’s Glenn Beck Radio Program, the CEO of the company behind the CryptoPhone 500 cleared up some of the confusion: Les Goldsmith of ESD America confirmed the towers aren’t necessarily large physical structures.
“That’s the one misconception the media got from this,” Goldsmith said. ”When we say a fake cellphone tower, that can be simply a laptop with two dongles plugged into it to actually give it GSM coverage.”
“It doesn’t have to be a large fully built tower,” he added. “So you can have somebody in a hotel room with a laptop that is collecting every phone within half a mile and having it run through there instead of a normal cell tower.
“Think of it as a cellular repeater. You put a cellular repeater in your building to give you better coverage. All your calls pass through the cellular repeater. Well, an interceptor pretends to be a cell tower and passes your call on like a cellular repeater. It just turns encryption off on the way so it can listen.”
Here is the map from Goldsmith and his company showing where the “towers” they located are:
http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/u...24-620x351.jpgThis map from ESD America shows where its special phone picked up on “fake” tower pings. But the towers aren’t physical structures — they are devices that mimic towers.

But again, they’re not necessarily physical towers.
To be fair, the second site to pick up the “17 fake towers” story did eventually add a note at the top of its story admitting the confusion:

There have been many comments to this story from people who are assuming that these ‘towers’ are physical installations. There’s no reason to assume this is the case: it’s far likelier that they are mobile installations of the kind used not only by law enforcement and government agencies, but also by scammers and other criminals.

But the damage seemed to already be done when the original story took off.
Now you have a more complete picture. The use of such technology is still concerning and worth debate, but at least you know that some mysterious construction group isn’t necessarily erecting actual towers in the dead of night and disguising them. Instead, it seems more likely that law enforcement and other government agencies are doing it in a much more covert and frankly easy way with small device and laptop.
And that’s probably more scary.

Mystery of Rogue Cell Towers Discovered, Feds attempt to downplay growing spy grid

Posted on September 5, 2014 by ror1774
http://reclaimourrepublic.files.word...ower.jpg?w=640
September 4, 2014 by Mikael Thalen


Recent reports on rogue cell phone towers being used across the country to intercept mobile cell phone data is drawing a response from federal agents who claim the towers are not being used by law enforcement groups.



“I doubt that they are installed by law enforcement as they require a warrant to intercept conversations or data and since the cell providers are ordered by the court to cooperate with the intercept, there really would be no need for this,” former FBI agent Ross Rice told CBS Chicago. “Most likely, they are installed and operated by hackers, trying to steal personal identification and passwords.”



Law enforcement’s fight to keep these systems in place is likely rooted in one thing: parallel construction.


Used to conceal how a law enforcement investigation began, parallel construction allows police to create a criminal case while concealing how the evidence, often obtained illegally, was acquired.


Speaking exclusively with ********, NSA whistleblower Kirk Wiebe, who helped develop the data processing system ThinThread, broke down the danger of surveillance and parallel construction.


“Now we have NSA collaborating with FBI and DEA doing something called ‘Parallel Construction.’ In such a scenario, NSA sends information to a law enforcement agency, such as Drug Enforcement Agency and that agency uses the information secretly to investigate individuals, circumventing the law. No warrants,” Wiebe said.
“In fact, the agency actively covers up the source of the information to make it look like the information came out of classical law enforcement investigatory techniques. DEA has a special unit called the ‘SOD’ – Special Operations Division that does the cover up work. The legal consequence of doing this kind of surreptitious collaboration between intelligence and law enforcement is to deny an accused person their legal rights under the Constitution,” Wiebe added. “They are denied the opportunity to face their accuser because the source of the information is kept under wraps/hidden.”


Despite the CBS article’s attempt to claim that law enforcement does not have access to stationary cell phone interception devices, exclusive documents provided to ******** last year by a source within the Seattle government revealed an expansive “mesh network” throughout the city capable of intercepting cell information in real-time.
The mesh network system, funded with a $2.6 million “Port of Seattle” grant from the Department of Homeland Security, allows several groups within Seattle to communicate outside of normal cellular channels via “mesh network nodes” attached to utility poles while collecting vast amounts of information from the city’s many surveillance systems.


One page from the document clearly details law enforcement’s involvement with federal agencies such as the local Fusion Center, a DHS-run group where FBI and police collect data on Americans deemed “extremist” for such engaging in such crimes as “loving liberty.”
http://reclaimourrepublic.files.word...ng?w=960&h=722



Page 65 of the document details the Network Mesh System’s (NMS) ability to collect identifying data on anyone “accessing the network.” A public user guide from the network’s designer, Aruba Software, openly admits that “a wealth of information about unassociated devices” can be retrieve as well.


“The NMS also collects information about every Wi‐Fi client accessing the network, including its MAC address, IP address, signal intensity, data rate and traffic status,” the document reads. “Additional NMS features include a fault management system for issuing alarms and logging events according to a set of customizable filtering rules, along with centralized and version‐controlled remote updating of the Aruba Mesh Operating System software.”


Cell phone users walking within the vicinity of a network node could not only have their IP address grabbed, but even have the last 1,000 GPS locations taken as well.
The document also reveals how the system controls several other surveillance technologies such as license plate readers, which gather and store information on millions of drivers per month.


A seperate page within the document cache entitled “Police Video Diagram” shows how police vehicles even receive and control live-video feeds from the city’s expansive collection of surveillance cameras – also tied into the mesh network system.
http://reclaimourrepublic.files.word...ng?w=960&h=638
Although the city has claimed that its cameras do not have facial recognition capabilities, the Seattle government secretly participation in the 2012 TrapWire program which used sophisticated facial recognition software, ran through city’s surveillance cameras, to gather intelligence for federal agencies. Only two years later, the Seattle Police Department announced its plan to purchase a facial recognition program with a DHS grant to allegedly scan and compare surveillance video to the city’s mugshot database.
Although the mesh network was deactivated “until further notice” following public outcry in 2013, a civil liberties advocate testing the police department’s promise found an active network node just last month. Police explained the “rogue” device away as a simple mistake.


While some hackers do abuse similar technologies, the vast majority of surveillance abuses are carried out by local governments armed to the teeth with federally provided spy tech.


Unfortunately, rogue cell towers are only one piece of the “smart” surveillance grid currently suffocating the country. Despite claims that police need warrants to intercept people’s cell information, the deployment of Stingrays, a suitcase-sized device that mimics a cell tower, proves otherwise.


A report in Wired Magazine from last March discovered that the Tallahassee Police Department had used a Stringray as many as 200 times since 2010 without ever acquiring a warrant. The department argued that a non-disclosure agreement signed with the device’s manufacturer prevented them from obtaining warrants beforehand.


Emails uncovered last June showed how the U.S. Marshals Service purposely taught police how to deceive judges when trying to acquire Stringrays. In fact, when a public records request threatened to further expose the illegal activity, U.S. Marshals stormed a Florida police department and seized all Stingray documents.


A report by the Tacoma News Tribune last month revealed that a Washington state police department similarly used a nondisclosure agreement with the FBI to keep their 2008 Stingray transaction private.


Countless other technologies such as “Intellistreets” light fixtures, capable of recording audio and video of pedestrians passing by, have begun popping up in major cities such as Las Vegas.


Meanwhile, as the media focuses on malicious hackers stealing nude photographs from celebrities, the fact that police regularly use the same software remains almost completely overlooked.
http://www.********.com/exclusive-my...rs-discovered/
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‘Interceptor’ Cellphone Towers Found Near White House, Senate

September 18, 2014

Mysterious “interceptor” cellphone towers that can listen in someone’s phone call despite not being part of any phone networks have turned up near the White House and Senate.

A company that specializes in selling secure mobile phones discovered the existence of several of the towers in and around the nation’s capitol.

“It’s highly unlikely that federal law enforcement would be using mobile interceptors near the Senate,” ESD America CEO Les Goldsmith told the technology website Venture Beat on Thursday.

The towers are also capable of loading spyware onto a mobile device before passing off a victim’s call to a legitimate network.

“My suspicion is that it is a foreign entity,” he told Venture Beat.

The reason Mr. Goldsmith doesn’t suspect U.S. agencies of placing the interceptors is that the federal government already has the capability of tapping directly into the carriers.

The devices, although often called a tower, can actually be as small as a suitcase, the website reported.

Goldsmith told the site he passed along the information he’d uncovered to the Federal Communications Commission.

Remember the telephone towers?

Remember how it died out?

Well, it's BACK.

Now we KNOW what those towers are for and why they were near military and federal installations.

Leading the day: DOJ using fake cell towers on planes to scoop up cell data – A bumpy road for USA FREEDOM Act

By TAL KOPAN & JOSEPH MARKS | 11/14/14 10:03 AM EDT
With help from David Perera and Tony Romm
LEADING THE DAY: DOJ USING FAKE CELL TOWERS ON PLANES TO SCOOP UP CELL DATA — Since 2007, the U.S. Marshall’s Service has been flying planes over the U.S. equipped with devices that mimic cellphone towers, gathering cell registration data from thousands of Americans below and pulling out any registration linked to wanted suspects, according to a Wall Street Journal scoop last night. Cell information from non-suspects is “let go,” unnamed sources told the Journal. When a suspect’s phone is identified, law enforcement knows the suspect’s location to within 10 feet, the report said. From the Journal: “Similar devices are used by U.S. military and intelligence officials operating in other countries, including in war zones, where they are sometimes used to locate terrorist suspects, according to people familiar with the work. In the U.S…the technology has been effective in catching suspected drug dealers and killers.”


The system, sometimes called a “dirtbox” and designed by Boeing, tricks cellphones into thinking it’s the nearest tower so the phones supply registration information — essentially a man-in-the-middle attack — the Journal reported. The interception can sometimes interrupt calls but has been designed to not interrupt 911 calls. Officials insisted Marshall’s investigations operate entirely within the bounds of the law, though they did not verify details of the program. Privacy advocates said that — like the NSA’s collection of bulk telephone metadata — the program represents a gross invasion of American’s privacy. The flights operate out of five metropolitan airports, from which law enforcement can fly over the majority of the U.S. population, the Journal reported. “For cost reasons, the flights usually target a number of suspects at a time, rather than just a single fugitive,” the report said. “But they can be used for a single suspect if the need is great enough to merit the resources.” The story: http://on.wsj.com/1EHIEez
SCOOPLET: MCCAUL SAYS CYBER BILLS TO STAND ALONE IN LAME DUCK — House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul says “intense” negotiations are ongoing about a suite of cybersecurity bills that lawmakers want to pass in the lame duck, but the focus has shifted away from attaching them to the National Defense Authorization Act. Instead, senators will try to get their bills passed as standalone legislation that the House can act on. “I think the Senate would like to pass it sort of independently, separate,” McCaul told MC after speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations last night. Attaching three bills from the Senate Homeland Security Committee to a pre-conferenced version of the NDAA had been the focus of negotiations among lawmakers in the past few weeks, including a workforce bill, an authorization of DHS’s cybersecurity center and an update to the Federal Information Security Management Act, but McCaul said that was no longer the primary focus. “A must-pass bill is always an easier way to do it, so the NDAA would make sense,” McCaul said, “but I think [the Senate] want[s] to break it up [into] individual bills and pass it independently.”


-- The biggest holdup, McCaul said, is a jurisdictional squabble between House Homeland and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee over which department manages federal agency cybersecurity — and that’s holding up the FISMA update. “I think we could get it passed on suspension with the exception of FISMA, which we’ll have a fight with OGR, and then that’s a fight we have on the floor,” McCaul said. “[Sen.] Tom Coburn and I and [Sen. Tom] Carper strongly believe that the current reality is that DHS has the operational control over the .gov space, Government Reform is just throwing their jurisdictional flag down saying, ‘No, we want OMB to control that, not DHS.’ OMB has three employees. OMB doesn’t want that mission…and yet because of a jurisdictional fight which defies reality and common sense, that’s what’s currently blocking it.” McCaul said Coburn is motivated to pass the bill in the lame duck before he retires from Congress. “In the Senate, we’ve had very fruitful and good faith negotiations with our counterparts to the point where I think we’ve got about 80 percent of what we’re trying to achieve,” he said during the event. Background on the OGR-Homeland battle: http://politico.pro/1ArQjMX. McCaul’s CFR remarks: http://bit.ly/11mGbbz



HAPPY FRIDAY and welcome to Morning Cybersecurity, where we’re indebted to Yale historian Beverly Gage and her discovery of the uncensored version of a vicious threat letter FBI officials sent to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1964 for two important reminders: First, that surveillance is nothing new in government. Second, that the smallest piece of arcana can sometimes yield incredible insights about history’s contours, tones and personalities. Details from NPR: http://n.pr/1zSXHCo Whatever arcana you’re pulling from the jaws of history today, drop us a line. Send your thoughts, tips and feedback this week to jmarks@politico.com and follow @talkopan, @joseph_marks_, @POLITICOPro and @MorningCybersec. Full team info is below.


A BUMPY ROAD FOR USA FREEDOM — Surveillance reform advocates' celebrations this week proved short lived. After Senate Democrats signaled Wednesday they'd take the next procedural step to advance the USA Freedom Act, a few skeptical lawmakers surfaced Thursday, airing criticisms that threaten to scuttle the bill for good this year. If NSA reform is stalled until the next congress, chances diminish that any other cybersecurity priorities will sneak through during the lame duck. Senate GOP Whip John Cornyn said he is “uncomfortable trying to jam through” a bill like USA Freedom during the lame duck, while Intel Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein said she “still has some problems” with the measure, possibly related to its mechanism for a special advocate on the surveillance court. An aide to Sen. Patrick Leahy, the bill's author, said he “has been working for months” with Feinstein on the issue, adding "they will continue working together to make sure the Senate passes strong legislation to end the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records."


ICYMI: USIS BREACH COULD BE MUCH BIGGER THAN WE THOUGHT — The number of federal employees affected by the data breach at the government background investigation firm U.S. Investigative Services is still unclear, and could be much greater than that already reported, a former DHS top official said yesterday afternoon. Around 25,000 DHS employees are already known to have had their personal data stolen from USIS this summer by hackers with the hallmarks of Chinese state-sponsorship. DHS and the Office of Personnel Management, through which a majority of federal background investigations are conducted, canceled their contracts with USIS in wake of the breach. What’s unclear is how many other federal agencies also sent background investigation work to USIS, Chris Cummiskey said. “We weren’t able to get good counts from other departments as to ‘Did they have other contracts [with USIS]?’ separate from what they were sending to OPM,” said the former acting deputy secretary for management who left DHS this month to form his own consulting firm. Cummiskey said he wouldn’t be surprised if the total number of uncounted additional victims was “equal to what we [already] encountered.”


10 CHEERS AND ONE JEER FOR EPA CYBERSECURITY — The EPA won more approbation than censure in an audit out yesterday focused on its compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act’s cybersecurity requirements. EPA has an agency-wide program “consistent” with FISMA requirements in areas that include continuous monitoring, identity and access management and incident response and reporting, the agency’s inspector general said in an annual report. In all, auditors found 10 cyber requirements on which EPA was fully meeting its mark. But — there’s always a but from auditors — “EPA should place more emphasis on remediating deficiencies found within the agency’s Configuration Management program.” Specifically, the agency should more quickly address deviations in its network configuration identified by scans, maintain documentation of baseline scans and patch its systems more regularly. The report: http://1.usa.gov/1tOSQKf



FCC’s SIMPSON: FRAMEWORK WOULD PROTECT BREACHED BUSINESSES — Companies that implement the NIST cybersecurity framework will be partially protected from regulatory enforcement actions in case of a breach because of a presumption they engaged in best practices, Rear Admiral (ret.) David Simpson, chief of the Federal Communications Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, said yesterday. Speaking at the Committee for Economic Development’s Fall Policy Conference yesterday, Simpson said the FCC prefers a paradigm that rewards teamwork among industry as opposed to regulation. “We really believe that it’s important that there be a carrot, a pot of gold at the tough rainbow that we’ve laid out ahead for industry in this,” he said. “And I think it really goes like this: If you’re engaged in the paradigm … there’s a presumption from the FCC standpoint that that attack does not need significant additional enforcement follow-up,” he said. “If, however, your company has said, ‘Hey, I’m on my own. I don’t use this framework thing, and I’ve got my own plan for how I’m going to address risk,’ then ... we would need to have a different discussion” about whether adequate protections were taken.”


BUSINESS BYTE: SYMANTEC ELIMINATES COO – Information security company Symantec has eliminated its Chief Operating Officer, the company announced yesterday. The news comes just weeks after the company that pioneered anti-virus software announced it was splitting its business in two parts, one for security and one for information management, and one week after reports that 2,000 layoffs were planned. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday, Symantec said that Vice President and COO Stephen Gillett was no longer in his position as of yesterday. The company will eliminate the COO role altogether, and Gillett will “remain at the company in a nonexecutive capacity for a transitional period.” The filing: http://bit.ly/1xU6nUS
REPORT WATCH:



-- The electric power industry is working through a variety of initiatives to ensure the resilience of the power grid in the face of threats that range from cyberattacks to natural disasters, the Chertoff Group says. The consulting firm also identifies areas for improvement. The report: http://bit.ly/1sLiHlP
-- What can cyberweapons do to deter foreign attacks? Not much, according to Center for Strategic and International Studies Senior Fellow James Lewis’ contribution to CSIS’s 2015 Global Security report. Cyberweapons are too limited and tactical for the main job of deterrence — threatening an adversary that crosses an unacceptable threshold with an unacceptable cost, Lewis writes, adding that “a stand-alone cyberattack like Stuxnet would create only temporary annoyance, and annoyance is not an astute strategy.” The report: http://bit.ly/1xmMLvI
ON THE MOVE 1 — Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Daniel Chiu is joining the Atlantic Council as deputy director of the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security. Chiu “was primarily responsible for developing national defense strategy and guidance for defense investments in military force structure, technology, and non-materiel solutions” at the Defense Department, per the Atlantic Council release. More: http://bit.ly/1xxSble
ON THE MOVE 2 — Former McAfee executive Kelly Haggerty has been appointed to cyber threat firm IID as its chief product officer, Security Week reports. Haggerty has been working for the company since late September, and is primarily responsible for its information sharing platform. Haggerty was vice president of product at McAfee until earlier this year. More: http://bit.ly/1EByJpd
QUICK BYTES
-- Security researchers, creating a sock-puppet army to manipulate comment trolling on news and sharing sites found that someone had already done so. Digital News Asia: http://bit.ly/1xVkadM
-- The Federal Trade Commission is seeking assurances from Apple that it won’t share health data gathered by its devices without owners’ consent. Reuters: http://reut.rs/1xmSwcM
-- Making more NOAA data public could alleviate some pressure on security operations, execs say. Federal Computer Week: http://bit.ly/1uiJJXi
-- The UK government is helping develop the nation’s cyber insurance market. The Register: http://bit.ly/1pXD4BR
-- Automakers have agreed on principles governing the privacy of personal data generated by connected cars. ThreatPost: http://bit.ly/1xmMWas
-- Farm organization and agricultural data companies publish privacy standards. Reuters: http://reut.rs/1xy4ldW
-- The “Flea” attack group is preparing to attack the G-20. Symantec: http://bit.ly/1tP5yIG
-- BlackBerry is ramping up its efforts to sell mobile security to other providers. AP: http://apne.ws/1EBQBjv
-- Home routers could be a vector for invisible tampering with online ballots. ThreatPost: http://bit.ly/113Pc8k
-- Security vendors, in fierce competition for users, should remember that cooperation is key in fighting malware, a top Microsoft security official said Friday. IDG News, via CSO: http://bit.ly/1BmPPe0
That’s all for today. Have a great weekend!
Stay in touch with the whole team: Tal Kopan (tkopan@politico.com, @TalKopan); Shaun Waterman (swaterman@politico.com, @WatermanReports); Joseph Marks (JMarks@politico.com, @Joseph_Marks_); and David Perera (dperera@politico.com, @daveperera).

U.S. Marshals are spying on cell phone users with flying fake towers



Mobile By Lee Mathews Nov. 14, 2014 12:28 pm

http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploa...na-590x330.jpg

What do Iraqi insurgents and U.S. citizens have in common? Both have been targeted by aerial spying programs that use fake cell towers. It’s been going on since 2007.
A report from The Guardian details a so-called “dirtbox” program, employed by the Justice Department and U.S. Marshals to track movements of suspected criminals. Authorities shove the dirtbox — a device that pretends to be an ordinary cell phone tower — into a Cessna, then fly around the country looking for lawbreakers.
They’re reportedly flying out of five major airports, and have a range that’s good enough to cover nearly the entire U.S. population. A plane makes a pass overhead and slurps up signals from cell phone users in hopes of identifying a target. Once a suspect’s signal has been acquired, the dirtbox is supposed to ignore other cell phones and focus on the target. By that point, though, thousands (or even tens of thousands) of signals from law-abiding citizens have also been intercepted.
While The Guardian says there’s no clear legal basis for what the Justice Department is doing, an anonymous source assured them that they had received judicial approval (surprise surprise). Bulk cellphone location harvesting is something that NSA spokespeople repeatedly denied in the wake of the Snowden leaks, but clearly someone in the U.S. government has been doing it. The ACLU is calling the “dirtbox” program “the latest example of them taking impersonation to the extreme.”
But hey, on a good note, the dirtboxes have been modified so as not to interfere with 911 calls. I guess that means we should all be more appreciative, right?
Now read: NSA hijacked criminal botnets to carry out spying program

Gadgets U.S. Marshals Using Fake, Airplane-based Cell Towers to Scan Cell Phones of Americans
Brandon Hill (Blog) - November 14, 2014 9:05 AM

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Program has been in operation since 2007, and scoops up the information of innocent Americans in the process

It looks as though the Department of Justice has some explaining to do with regards to their ongoing spying program on Americans. A new report from The Wall Street Journal claims that the U.S. Marshals Service has been operating a program for the past seven years that allows the agency to intercept unique IDs (and more) from innocent Americans’ cell phones using fake cell towers installed in small airplanes.

According to the WSJ, the airplanes — typically single-engine Cessnas — are equipped with what are known as DRT boxes or “dirtboxes” that are manufactured by Digital Receiver Technology Inc., a subsidiary Boeing. These boxes are designed to imitate a cell tower signal, and most importantly, trick a cell phone into thinking that this “tower” is providing the strongest possible signal. Since cell phones are automatically programmed to connect to the tower providing the strongest signal, the cell phone will send its “unique registration information” to the dirtbox.

The whole purpose of the program is for the government to track individuals that are currently under investigation, but given the fact that these dirtboxes cast such a wide net due to its aerial nature, thousands, if not millions of innocent Americans have been subjected to the surveillance since 2007.

The report says that a court order is obtained to initiate the intercepts, but it is unknown if the drastic measures that the U.S. Marshals take to lock in on their target are detailed within those court orders.

http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/wsj_dirtbox.jpg

The dirtboxes and the software running on the devices can sift through the registration information that it scoops up and identify the subjects that are currently under surveillance. What’s not known is what is done with the information collected from innocent Americans or how long it is kept before the data is purged. Stockpiling the information for later use would be unconstitutional.

These dirtboxes can even interrupt the phone service of targeted phones, but sources familiar with the operation of the devices say that the dirtboxes have been programmed not to interrupt 911 calls (which would open up a whole new can of worms). But the level of sophistication of the dirtboxes doesn’t stop there; they can triangulate a person’s position to within 10 feet, while newer versions can jam signals and intercept text messages and photos.

The scope of the program is pretty vast, with aircraft operating from at least five metropolitan airports with a “flying range covering most of the U.S. population.”

Officials for the DOJ said that they could neither confirm nor deny the existence of the program.
Source: The Wall Street Journal

US Marshals Tracking Cell Phones With Fake ‘Tower’ Broadcasts From Small Airplanes

By Thomas Halleck@tommylikeyt.halleck@ibtimes.com on November 13 2014 7:05 PM

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The U.S. Marshals Service uses small Cessna aircraft like the ones pictured to broadcast fake cell phone tower signals, tricking cell phones into offering their location data and identifying information, according to a WSJ report. Reuters


The U.S. government is tracking the location of criminals and a number of regular citizens with a secret program that tracks cell phones, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The Justice Department uses small aircraft that contain a device that tricks phones into sending identifying data.
The U.S. Marshals Service has used Cessna aircraft out of five major airports around the country in an operation that intercepts phone signals by impersonating a cell phone tower. Officials told the newspaper that the program was legal, and has operated since 2007, ensnaring innocent people as well as fugitives -- whose capture is the marshals’ primary objective -- according to the Journal report Thursday evening.
The range of the aircraft covers most of the U.S. population using 2-foot-square devices that law enforcement calls “dirtboxes,” referring to the initials of their manufacturer, Digital Recovery Technology Inc. The devices can intercept data from tens of thousands of phones in a single flight, which the marshals conduct “on a regular basis,” according to the report.
Since phones are programmed to connect to the strongest signals that they detect, they automatically link up to the U.S. Marshals Service’s “dirtboxes.” The devices are not thwarted by the encryption methods used for privacy protection on some phones, according to unnamed “people familiar with the operations” quoted in the report.
The operations are similar to the National Security Agency’s secret program to collect the phone records of millions of Americans, which was revealed last year by former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden. The government has argued that such data collection methods are a safe and noninvasive way to find terrorists and criminals, with data on innocent people filtered out or ignored, but privacy advocates argue they infringe on constitutional rights.

Note the article source and then the source the article used.

FAKE CELLPHONE TOWERS ON PLANES TARGET CRIMINALS IN SECRET US SPY PROGRAM

• Daily Sabah
• Updated : 14.11.2014 10:25:31
• Published : 14.11.2014 02:06:44

http://i.tmgrup.com.tr/dailysabah/20...5923585153.jpg
ISTANBUL — According to an article recently published by the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Justice Department is gathering data from thousands of cellphones through fake communications towers deployed on airplanes. The Justice Department is using this new technology in order to snag criminal suspects by intercepting their cellphone signals. This has left many Americans vulnerable. According to people familiar with the operation a large number of innocent people are inevitably having their signals snagged.

The operation works by planes flying overhead and intercepting cellphone signals. The planes are equipped with devices sometimes known as, 'dirtboxes' which act as cell towers of large telecommunications firms and trick cellphones into reporting their unique registration information. According to familiar sources, in a single flight thousands of cellphones can be identified and information on their general location can be determined.

The government would previously have had to ask companies for information about their cellphone towers, but now they can obtain this information directly. Apparently there is no need for a court order to obtain this information. However, information gathered on innocent people is not being kept and discarded in a timely fashion. A federal appeals court ruled earlier this year that over-collection of data by investigators, and stockpiling of such data, was a violation of the Constitution.

Suspicious Cellular Activity In D.C. Suggests Monitoring Of Individuals' Smartphones

March 16, 2017

As the discussion over wiretapping and foreign hacking still dominates the conversation in Washington, an unusually high amount of suspicious cell phone activity in the nation’s capital has caught the attention of the Department of Homeland Security, raising concerns that U.S. officials are being monitored by a foreign entity.

The issue was first reported in the Washington Free Beacon, but a source at telecom security firm ESD America confirmed the spike in suspicious activity to CBS News.

ESD America, hired preemptively for a DHS pilot program this January called ESD Overwatch, first noticed suspicious activity around cell phone towers in certain parts of the capital, including near the White House. This kind of activity can indicate that someone is monitoring specific individuals or their devices.

DHS confirmed the pilot program but did not comment on the suspicious activity.

“The Overwatch system is part of a 90-day pilot that was initiated on January 18, 2017,” the agency said in a statement. “The Overwatch System is managed by DHS, through ESD America Inc., a defense and law enforcement technology provider that provides technical security assistance to government and corporate clients.”

According to the ESD America source, the first such spike of activity was in D.C. but there have been others in other parts of the country.

Based on the type of technology used, the source continued, it is likely that the suspicious activity was being conducted by a foreign nation.

The news comes the same week that two Democratic lawmakers wrote to Kelly saying they were “deeply concerned” about hacking vulnerabilities in U.S. cellular networks.

“For several years, cyber security experts have repeatedly warned that U.S. cellular communications networks are vulnerable to surveillance by foreign governments, hackers, and criminals exploiting vulnerabilities in Signaling System 7,” wrote Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-California). “U.S. cellular phones can be tracked, tapped, and hacked—by adversaries thousands of miles away—through SS7-enabled surveillance. We are deeply concerned that the security of America’s telecommunications infrastructure is not getting the attention it deserves.”

Feds: There Are Hostile Stingrays In DC, But We Don’t Know How To Find Them

There’s also “anomalous activity”—probably stingrays—in other US cities, too.

April 3, 2018

The federal government has formally acknowledged for the first time that it has located suspected and unauthorized cell-site simulators in various parts of Washington, DC.

The revelation, which was reported for the first time on Tuesday by the Associated Press, was described in a letter recently released from the Department of Homeland Security to the offices of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon).

"Overall, [DHS' National Protection and Programs Directorate] believes the malicious use of IMSI catchers is a real and growing risk," wrote Christopher Krebs, DHS' acting undersecretary, in a March 26, 2018 letter to Wyden.

The letter and attached questionnaire say that DHS had not determined who is operating the simulators, how many it found, or where they were located.

DHS also said that its NPPD is "not aware of any current DHS technical capability to detect IMSI catchers." The agency did not explain precisely how it was able to observe "anomalous activity" that "appears to be consistent" with cell-site simulators.

The devices, which are also known as stingrays or IMSI catchers, are commonly used by domestic law enforcement nationwide to locate a particular phone. Sometimes, they can also be used to intercept text messages and phone calls. Stingrays act as a fake cell tower and effectively trick a cell phone into transmitting to it, which gives up the phone’s location.

Given that cell-site simulators have been used for years at home, it would be naive to think that malevolent actors, including criminals and foreign governments, would not attempt to set up stingrays in major American cities, particularly the capital.

DHS' answers also say that the agency is "aware" of the use of stingrays in other US cities, although it did not name them.

"NPPD is aware of anomalous activity outside the [National Capital Region] that appears to be consistent with IMSI catchers," Krebs also wrote. "NPPD has not validated or attributed this activity to specific entities or devices. However, NPPD has shared this information with Federal partners."

In 2015, various federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, said that, in most circumstances, they will require a warrant when they use a stingray. Some states also impose similar requirements.

In 2014, the Federal Communications Commission began a task force into the "illicit" use of stingrays in America, but the investigation doesn't appear to have produced any public reports or taken any meaningful actions.

Neither the FCC nor DHS immediately responded to Ars' request for comment.

I still do not understand why there isn't a utility that allows you to specify which cell towers your phone will connect to.

You could download an authorized list and then deny or prompt for other towers. This would make Stingray type devices useless for spying on people who need secure communications.

In fact, it would allow foreign actors to intercept useless comms from teenagers chatting about snorting condoms while at the same time preventing important comms from being intercepted. Win-Win.