China exploiting mobile networks to spy on American cellphones: report

China may be abusing telecoms' vulnerabilities to spy on Americans’ cellphones through Caribbean phone networks, according to a new report.

“No one in the industry wants the public to know the severity of ongoing surveillance attacks,” Gary Miller, a former tech security executive, told the Guardian in a new report published Tuesday. “I want the public to know about it.”

Miller based his findings on years spent examining threat reports and signaling traffic between foreign and domestic mobile operators. He told the paper that China may have used Caribbean networks to do the job – Barbados, in particular.

At issue are "signaling messages," behind-the-scenes communications that help mobile phone networks connect calls and track roaming for users. But China allegedly is taking advantage of the information to spy on people, monitor their location and habits, and even intercept communications.

If your phone is from Florida, but you’re in Oregon, cellphone networks must be able to track it in order to function. Working through a state-controlled mobile operator, China can ostensibly abuse the signals.

Miller told the paper that China allegedly conducted more attacks on U.S. mobile phones than anyone else in 2018 – the majority of them routed through China Unicom, a state-owned operator. And it wasn’t just a few issues of targeted spying – it was mass data collection.

“Once you get into the tens of thousands, the attacks qualify as mass surveillance, which is primarily for intelligence collection and not necessarily targeting high-profile targets,” Miller said. “It might be that there are locations of interest, and these occur primarily while people are abroad.”

By 2019, the attacks shifted in origin to Barbados, he told the paper. That's when he said he noticed a pattern -- users getting pinged by China Unicom were also getting signaled by operators

The Guardian report offers little to nothing in the way of forensic or technical evidence to back the claims, but is reliant merely on Miller's track record of expertise as an industry insider. There have been similar allegation in the past, particularly a prior similar 2018-2019 report titled Far From Home.

Some of the details of the alleged China snooping are as follows:

"At the heart of the allegations are claims that China, using a state-controlled mobile phone operator, is directing signaling messages to US subscribers, usually while they are travelling abroad.
Signaling messages are commands that are sent by a telecoms operators across the global network, unbeknownst to a mobile phone user. They allow operators to locate mobile phones, connect mobile phone users to one another, and assess roaming charges. But some signaling messages can be used for illegitimate purposes, such as tracking, monitoring, or intercepting communications."

Miller claims that among US telecoms providers it's a bit of an "open secret" but that "No one in the industry wants the public to know the severity of ongoing surveillance attacks."

The findings appear to center on Signaling System 7 (SS7), a communications protocol which routes calls and data around the world. Analysts have long decried its inherent weaknesses and security vulnerabilities.

China's Communist Party (CCP) seems to be implementing a multidimensional strategy in the Caribbean, reaping economic, political and potentially military gains a few miles offshore the United States. https://t.co/cb692ZoyGl — Joaquín Ortega (@ortegabrothers) December 10, 2020

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