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SS7 STRIKES AGAIN —<br>
<font size="+2"><b>Saudi Arabia reportedly tracked phones by using
industry-wide carrier weakness</b></font><br>
<b>Kingdom sent US carrier millions of location requests through
SS7.</b><br>
DAN GOODIN - 3/30/2020<br>
<b>arsTECHNICA</b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/saudi-arabia-reportedly-tracked-phones-by-using-industry-wide-carrier-weakness/">https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/saudi-arabia-reportedly-tracked-phones-by-using-industry-wide-carrier-weakness/</a><br>
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The Guardian says it has evidence that Saudi Arabia is exploiting a
decades-old weakness in the global telecoms network to track the
kingdom’s citizens as they travel in the United States.<br>
<br>
The publication cited data provided by a whistleblower that suggests
Saudi Arabia is engaged in systematic spying by abusing Signalling
System No. 7. Better known as SS7, it’s a routing protocol that
allows cell phone users to connect seamlessly from carrier to
carrier as they travel throughout the world. With little built-in
security for carriers to verify one another, SS7 has always posed a
potential hole that people with access could exploit to track the
real-time location of individual users. SS7 abuse also makes it
possible for spies to snoop on calls and text messages. More
recently, the threat has grown, in part because the number of
companies with access to SS7 has grown from a handful to thousands.<br>
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[ ..... ]<br>
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<br>
WORLD NEWS<br>
MARCH 30, 2020<br>
<font size="+2"><b>Israel to use computer analysis to find likely
coronavirus carriers</b></font><br>
Steven Scheer, Tova Cohen<br>
<b>REUTERS</b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-israel-tracking-idUSKBN21H2TT">https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-israel-tracking-idUSKBN21H2TT</a><br>
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TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Israel’s defense ministry plans to use software
that analyses data gathered from mobile phones - produced, according
to Israeli media, by the spyware firm NSO - to help locate likely
carriers of the coronavirus in order to test them.<br>
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[ ..... ]<br>
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<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<font color="#b3b3b3"><i>Dr. Robert Mathews, D.Phil.<br>
Principal Technologist &<br>
</i><i>Distinguished Senior Research Scholar</i><i><br>
</i><i>Office of Scientific Inquiry & Applications (OSIA)</i><i><br>
</i><i>University of Hawai'i</i></font><br>
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