serious threat models

Jaap-Henk Hoepman jhh at cs.ru.nl
Fri Feb 3 04:15:38 EST 2006


I wondered about that too. Do commonly used mobile phone switches have built-in
functionality to divert (or rather split) calls to another phone; could this be
done using phone conference facilities? or could you easily use lawfull
interception fucntionality...? In other words, could it be done by
reconfiguring the switch?  Or would it require more drastic changes
(software/hardware) to the switch (which makes the number of people that could
actually do this much smaller...)

Jaap-Henk
(who should have paid more attention to phone switches when he worked at 
a telco... but everybody did internet there then ;-)

On Thu, 02 Feb 2006 21:28:31 -0500 "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb at cs.columbia.edu> writes:
> I hate to play clipping service, but this story is too important not to 
> mention.  Many top Greek officials, including the Prime Minister, and
> the U.S. embassy had their mobile phones tapped.  What makes this 
> interesting is how it was done: software was installed on the switch 
> that diverted calls to a prepaid phone.  Think about who could manage 
> that.
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/mobile/article/0,,1701298,00.html
> http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060202.wcelltap0202/BNStory/International/
>
>
> 		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
>
>
>
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-- 
Jaap-Henk Hoepman           |  I've got sunshine in my pockets
Dept. of Computer Science   |  Brought it back to spray the day
Radboud University Nijmegen |        Gry "Rocket"
(w) www.cs.ru.nl/~jhh       |  (m) jhh at cs.ru.nl
(t) +31 24 36 52710/53132   |  (f) +31 24 3653137


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