[Cryptography] stories from the real life MITM book

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Thu Sep 4 05:45:18 PDT 2014


----- Forwarded message from ianG <iang at iang.org> -----

Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 09:57:16 +0100
From: ianG <iang at iang.org>
To: Cryptography Mailing List <cryptography at metzdowd.com>
Subject: [Cryptography] stories from the real life MITM book
Message-ID: <5406D7EC.2030603 at iang.org>
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Evidence of MITMs is so rare it has to be trumpeted.  Snippets only.



http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/mysterious-phony-cell-towers-could-be-intercepting-your-calls


http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/02/who-is-putting-up-interceptor-cell-towers-the-mystery-deepens/

To show what the CryptoPhone can do that less expensive competitors
cannot, he points me to a map that he and his customers have created,
indicating 17 different phony cell towers known as “interceptors,”
detected by the CryptoPhone 500 around the United States during the
month of July alone. (The map below is from August.)  Interceptors look
to a typical phone like an ordinary tower.  Once the phone connects with
the interceptor, a variety of “over-the-air” attacks become possible,
from eavesdropping on calls and texts to pushing spyware to the device.



http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/02/who-is-putting-up-interceptor-cell-towers-the-mystery-deepens/
Who is putting up ‘interceptor’ cell towers? The mystery deepens

The discovery “appears to confirm real-world use of techniques that have
been highlighted by researchers for years,” said Stephen Ellis, manager
of cyber threat intelligence at security firm iSIGHT Partners. While
noting that his company “cannot confirm the accuracy of this reporting
without further information,” Ellis told us that iSIGHT is “highly
confident that we have observed real-world use of this technique in
support of another of its uses – cyber crime [for] financial gain.”

“We have observed and reported on cases in other parts of the world
where actors are known to have set up fake base stations to send spoofed
SMS messages,” Ellis said, “possibly to send spam or to direct
unsuspecting victims to malicious websites.”

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced last month that it
is launching an investigation into the use of cell network interceptors
by criminal gangs and foreign intelligence.

We asked Goldsmith if he could be mistaken about the towers. Perhaps
they are just commercial ones that seem unusual?

“We can definitely tell” that they’re non-network towers, he said, by
analysis of the infrastructure. These phony towers, without names as
normal towers have, insist to your phone that they must handle the call
and then trick the phone into turning off its normal encryption.

Such a tower tells you that “none of your towers are currently
available,” Goldsmith told us. It says, “‘I’m your tower.’

“If you wanted to listen to a phone call,” he said, “this would be the
easy way.”
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