'Suspicious' Cellular Activity In D.C. Suggests Monitoring of Individual Smartphones

CBS News ^ | Marxh 18 2017 ast | Julia Kimani

[lepton]

I wonder what they’re actually saying. Packet cloning?

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Welcome to DC where the phones are “smart” and the “politicians” aren’t.

[upchuck]

From the article:

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.

Who is Kelly? Article doesn't say.

[USCG SimTech]

When your cell battery is dying 2-3 times faster it means the towers are pinging constantly to keep tabs of your location (among many other things).

[generally]

CBS is probably right in this case. (Broken clock) I’m sure that 0vomit gave all this information to hostile foreign governments so they didn’t need to monitor. Now that Trump is in the WH, the free flow of information to hostile powers has been cut.

[homegroan]

Very good!

[Elsie]

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.

Huh?

WHAT kind???

Dogs marrying cats?

[Elsie]

“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.”

I DO wish they'd make up their mind!

[mad_as_he$$]

Stingray’s big brother Manta ray.

[Elsie]

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

WHAT??

Then WHERE did THIS come from??

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.

---

This is not only a nothing burger; but it's made from tofu!!

I DO wish they'd make up their mind!

[Elsie]

>raising concerns that U.S. officials are being monitored by a foreign entity.<

NOW the FBI can put much more man-power on this; since Brady's jersey has been rescued!!

[Elsie]

If WIKI knows...

Logging and eavesdropping[edit]

Proxies can be installed in order to eavesdrop upon the data-flow between client machines and the web. All content sent or accessed – including passwords submitted and cookies used – can be captured and analyzed by the proxy operator. For this reason, passwords to online services (such as webmail and banking) should always be exchanged over a cryptographically secured connection, such as SSL. By chaining proxies which do not reveal data about the original requester, it is possible to obfuscate activities from the eyes of the user's destination. However, more traces will be left on the intermediate hops, which could be used or offered up to trace the user's activities. If the policies and administrators of these other proxies are unknown, the user may fall victim to a false sense of security just because those details are out of sight and mind. In what is more of an inconvenience than a risk, proxy users may find themselves being blocked from certain Web sites, as numerous forums and Web sites block IP addresses from proxies known to have spammed or trolled the site. Proxy bouncing can be used to maintain privacy.

 

 

 

Access control: Some proxy servers implement a logon requirement. In large organizations, authorized users must log on to gain access to the web. The organization can thereby track usage to individuals. Some anonymizing proxy servers may forward data packets with header lines such as HTTP_VIA, HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR, or HTTP_FORWARDED, which may reveal the IP address of the client. Other anonymizing proxy servers, known as elite or high-anonymity proxies, make it appear that the proxy server is the client. A website could still suspect a proxy is being used if the client sends packets which include a cookie from a previous visit that did not use the high-anonymity proxy server. Clearing cookies, and possibly the cache, would solve this problem.

 

 

 

Detection[edit]

There are several methods that can often be used to detect the presence of an intercepting proxy server:

• By comparing the client's external IP address to the address seen by an external web server, or sometimes by examining the HTTP headers received by a server. A number of sites have been created to address this issue, by reporting the user's IP address as seen by the site back to the user in a web page. Google also returns the IP address as seen by the page if the user searches for "IP".
• By comparing the result of online IP checkers when accessed using https vs http, as most intercepting proxies do not intercept SSL. If there is suspicion of SSL being intercepted, one can examine the certificate associated with any secure web site, the root certificate should indicate whether it was issued for the purpose of intercepting.
• By comparing the sequence of network hops reported by a tool such as traceroute for a proxied protocol such as http (port 80) with that for a non proxied protocol such as SMTP (port 25).^[15]
• By attempting to make a connection to an IP address at which there is known to be no server. The proxy will accept the connection and then attempt to proxy it on. When the proxy finds no server to accept the connection it may return an error message or simply close the connection to the client. This difference in behaviour is simple to detect. For example, most web browsers will generate a browser created error page in the case where they cannot connect to an HTTP server but will return a different error in the case where the connection is accepted and then closed.^[16]
• By serving the end-user specially programmed Adobe Flash SWF applications or Sun Java applets that send HTTP calls back to their server.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server

 

 

[proud American in Canada]

They should watch “Goodfellas.”

The mobster Paulie, I believe was his name, hated phones and insisted that his messages be delivered face-to-face.

It’s probably not practical in today’s world, but it’s certainly safer.