On Tuesday, January 28, 2020, 09:54:39 AM PST, coderman <coderman@protonmail.com> wrote:

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Tuesday, January 28, 2020 7:16 AM, jim bell <jdb10987@yahoo.com> wrote:

"WIRED: One Small Fix Would Curb Stingray Surveillance.

One Small Fix Would Curb Stingray Surveillance   

'''The telecom and tech industries could overcome these challenges if they decided to prioritize a fix. That's a big if. Nasser points to a solution that would function a lot like HTTPS web encryption, allowing phones to quickly check cell tower "certificates" to prove their legitimacy before establishing a secure connection. Last year, Hussain and colleagues from Purdue and the University of Iowa developed and proposed such an authentication scheme for the bootstrapping process in 5G."

"As long as phones will connect to anything advertising itself as a tower, it’s kind of free-for-all," Nasser says. "This problem is big low-hanging fruit, and there are many ways things could get better I think."


>never gonna happen :(
  would be nice, though...


A few years ago, I read that a disused, old cell phone (with no active subscription) would activate in the presence of one of these Stingray devices.  I never checked that idea out, mainly due to lack of motivation, and also since I don't know where such an operating stingray might be at any given time.   But if the power consumption of such a phone could be monitored continuously, that might implement a cheap, easy "Stingray detector".  

             Jim Bell