The network vendors disable the GSM warning to show you're not encrypted, so you don't even know you're going through a bogus/spoofed cell.
IT folks - carefully consider the implications of this on corporate security! A competitor parked in front of your offices with a few of these $1500 cobbled-together microcells in the back of his Suburban could capture and record the conversations of your employees, including senior management, if they use GSM phones!
As usual, read the comments at Slashdot - lots of great information and additional details contained therein.
Phone people ping - serious breach of phone privacy! Someone alert the Tech Ping as well...
IMSI catchers just act like a really strong cell base station and thus intercept the traffic aka “man in the middle” type of intercept. Been around for a long time.
They used one of these in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest book.
This was documented on hak5 at shmoocon this year.
Good. Ask them where my pizza is that I ordered an hour ago.
Obama knows he sucks....no need to listen to me telling everyone I know....:o)
This was done using a frequency counter an a AOR hacked (cut the green wire) scanner.
CDMA carriers don’t have this issue to contend with. :)
Add to that the A5/1 and A5/2 encryption used in most GSM phones is easily broken these days, and GSM has serious problems. IIRC, A5/3 is on pretty shaky ground too.
Thank the French. They didn’t want civilians using high-strength encryption, so had the standard made purposely weak. France had some pretty draconian laws against private use of encryption until the late 90s.