White hats do an NSA, figure out LIVE PHONE TRACKING via protocol vuln

By 26 Dec 2014 at 10:03, John Leyden & Simon Rockman
 
Security vulnerabilities in the SS7 phone-call routing protocol that allow mobile call and text message tracking will be revealed this weekend.
Details of SS7 vulnerabilities are due to be revealed to the public for the first time at the Chaos Communication Congress hacker conference in Hamburg on 27 December (schedule here). The talk, entitled SS7: Locate. Track. Manipulate, by Tobias Engel, promises to be absolutely fascinating.
 
Engel has given a preview interview to theWashington Post outlining what he is due to discuss.
“The flaws discovered by the German researchers are actually functions built into SS7 for other purposes – such as keeping calls connected as users speed down highways, switching from cell tower to cell tower – that hackers can repurpose for surveillance because of the lax security on the network,” the Washington Post explains. “Those skilled at the myriad functions built into SS7 can locate callers anywhere in the world, listen to calls as they happen or record hundreds of encrypted calls and texts at a time for later decryption. There also is potential to defraud users and cellular carriers by using SS7 functions.”
 
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