[liberationtech] State Actions...

[Robert Mathews (OSIA)]

SS7 STRIKES AGAIN —
*Saudi Arabia reportedly tracked phones by using industry-wide carrier
weakness*
*Kingdom sent US carrier millions of location requests through SS7.*
DAN GOODIN - 3/30/2020
*arsTECHNICA*
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/saudi-arabia-reportedly-tracked-phones-by-using-industry-wide-carrier-weakness/

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.

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.

[ ..... ]


WORLD NEWS
MARCH 30, 2020
*Israel to use computer analysis to find likely coronavirus carriers*
Steven Scheer, Tova Cohen
*REUTERS*
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-israel-tracking-idUSKBN21H2TT

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.

[ ..... ]

-- 
/Dr. Robert Mathews, D.Phil.
Principal Technologist &
//Distinguished Senior Research Scholar//
//Office of Scientific Inquiry & Applications (OSIA)//
//University of Hawai'i/
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