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DHS Says China, Russia, Iran, and Israel Are Spying on People in US with SS7 (404media.co) 75

Posted by msmash from the state-of-things dept.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) believes that China, Russia, Iran, and Israel are the "primary" countries exploiting security holes in telecommunications networks to spy on people inside the United States, which can include tracking their physical movements and intercepting calls and texts, according to information released by Senator Ron Wyden. 404 Media: The news provides more context around use of SS7, the exploited network and protocol, against phones in the country. In May, 404 Media reported that an official inside DHS's Cybersecurity Insurance and Security Agency (CISA) broke with his department's official narrative and publicly warned about multiple SS7 attacks on U.S. persons in recent years. Now, the newly disclosed information provides more specifics on where at least some SS7 attacks are originating from.

The information is included in a letter the Department of Defense (DoD) wrote in response to queries from the office of Senator Wyden. The letter says that in September 2017 DHS personnel gave a presentation on SS7 security threats at an event open to U.S. government officials. The letter says that Wyden staff attended the event and saw the presentation. One slide identified the "primary countries reportedly using telecom assets of other nations to exploit U.S. subscribers," it continues.

DHS Says China, Russia, Iran, and Israel Are Spying on People in US with SS7 More | Reply

DHS Says China, Russia, Iran, and Israel Are Spying on People in US with SS7

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  • The rest are not surprising. I think to many in the US, Israel will be surprising. Not as much as the lack of action their government will take.

    • Probably using the funds we send them. https://apnews.com/article/isr... [apnews.com]

    • After Pollard, why would that surprise anyone?

      • Because 95% of Americans wouldnâ(TM)t know that reference and the news networks and Facebook make sure of that. The vocal 1% scream at the knowledgeable 4% and the 95% care more about the Kardashians.

        • The people whose job it is to secure our telecom networks would know.

          • Most of the CEOs of our major telecom networks are Jews or Evangelical Zionists who wouldn't care or probably would help facilitate to further the cause of Israel, even to the detriment of America.
    • Why should this be surprising? Our foreign policy has a direct influence on how their affairs are conducted. Of course they want to know what we're doing - their intelligence agencies would be negligent if they weren't trying to collect on the US.

    • Re:Israel? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Rujiel ( 1632063 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2024 @02:50PM (#65020163)

      You have it completely backwards. Russia, Iran and China care little about what the US public thinks of them. Israel, meanwhile, has purchased nearly every legislator, and its lobbies like AIPAC brag about how every candidate they fund wins. Israel is the US' aircraft carrier, so if the US doesn't support Israel anymore, it's doomed--and public opinion has already turnrd against it during its active genocide.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by sfcat ( 872532 )
        Every candidate they fund does win. But not because they fund them. They stay away from crazy that during instability and that's a good way to pick winners in elections. The same calculation is done by any lobbying group giving to a political campaign. Also, words have meaning. When you use them incorrectly, all that does is hurt your credibility. Or did you think that Trump somehow looked to the voters like some paragon of skill and virtue. Hyperbole is why you lost and until you learn to stop it, y

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by Rujiel ( 1632063 )

          "They stay away from crazy"
          They choose candidates that will support Israel's agenda in the US, not because the candidates "aren't crazy". How is this complicated? They are backing nearly every neocon there is, and some of them are Christian fundamentalists who literally believe that Revelation ending is right around the corner.

          In fact, evangelicals have been Israel's strongest contingent even though their religion believes only a few tens of thousands of Jews witll be delivered after the Rapture. Does that

      • Mossad in here downvoting you as "troll" when you're 100% factually correct.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      How do you think they trick us into supporting their holy war & land thievery?

    • It's not surprising. Israel has been lying since day one. A former U.S. official has openly stated Israel blatantly lies about pretty much everything. They always have. His name escapes me, but he gave a long statement about lies Israel has done and gets away with because the U.S. turns a blind eye to what is does. Such as the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

      If you look at the State Department people who resigned, almost to one they talked about the lies which came from Israel about October 7th, and the

    • Why is it surprising? Israel is not the best ally, they did steal nuclear secrets from us too.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by msauve ( 701917 )
      Not the first time Israel has been caught spying on the US [wikipedia.org]. We should have cut off all support the first time. They're asshole ingrates.
    • have you never heard of Pegasus?
  • Why shouldn't they when the NSA is doing it to us as well. I'm much less concerned with what Iran might do with that information than what my own government will do with it. If we made those agencies end their domestic surveillance of citizens and instead tasked them with securing our communication networks and other infrastructure we could probably do considerably better at keeping other countries out as well.

  • SS7? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm guessing this is SS7? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re:SS7? (Score:5, Informative)

      by silentbozo ( 542534 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2024 @03:08PM (#65020215) Journal

      Yep. These "revelations" about SS7 vulnerabilities should be no surprise. This has less to do about deliberately engineered backdoors and more about longstanding vulnerabilities associated with maintaining backwards compatibility with legacy standards.

      It's like forcing HTTPS traffic to be downgraded to HTTP when going over certain network paths for compatibility reasons (well, except for the fact that the phone carriers aren't even using encryption...). My understanding is that everybody's unencrypted phone traffic is subject to spoofing, interception, tracking, etc. because the carriers registered in the global network are assumed to be trusted by default.

      https://github.com/simplerhack... [github.com]

      "Lack of Authentication and Sec SS7 trusts all network nodes implicitly, assuming they are legitimate. This trust model is problematic in interconnected networks where access is not tightly controlled.

      Insufficient Encryption Messages in SS7 are typically transmitted in plaintext within the network, exposing sensitive information to interception.

      Global Accessibility (Belgium example) With the proliferation of inter-carrier connections and the advent of IP-based signaling (SIGTRAN), access to SS7 networks has become more widespread, increasing the attack surface."

      https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]

      "At issue are the Signaling System Number 7 (SS7) and Diameter protocols, which are used by fixed and mobile network operators to enable interconnection between networks. They are part of the glue that holds today's telecommunications together.

      According to the US watchdog and some lawmakers, both protocols include security weaknesses that leave folks vulnerable to unwanted snooping. SS7's problems have been known about for years and years, as far back as at least 2008, and we wrote about them in 2010 and 2014, for instance. Little has been done to address these exploitable shortcomings.

      SS7, which was developed in the mid-1970s, can be potentially abused to track people's phones' locations; redirect calls and text messages so that info can be intercepted; and spy on users.

      The Diameter protocol was developed in the late-1990s and includes support for network access and IP mobility in local and roaming calls and messages. It does not, however, encrypt originating IP addresses during transport, which makes it easier for miscreants to carry out network spoofing attacks."

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by sfcat ( 872532 )
        It should also be pointed out that this attack only works when you are on a G3 or older network. G4 and above don't have these problems.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        because the carriers registered in the global network are assumed to be trusted by default.

        Yes.. It's something like how internet IP address routing works with BGP. You have to be a carrier network to get a BGP feed, but once you are Tier1 provider such as ATT: everyone has to accept the routes you advertise into the table giving your peer the technical power hijack any IP address you want and route it to your network. What stops the bad guys in theory is only authorized personnel at the trusted

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skaag ( 206358 )

        If you're interested in some cool stories about this and older vulnerabilities/exploits, this is a fun book from the OG, Captain Crunch:

        https://www.google.com/books/edition/Beyond_The_Little_Blue_Box/IWNmDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover

        I highly recommend it, those were different times and people don't know how bad the technology was before SS7...

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by MagicM ( 85041 )

        There was a recent video from Veritasium on this topic that describes all of the problems in a simple and accessible way.

        https://youtu.be/wVyu7NB7W6Y [youtu.be]

  • SS7 was designed in the 70's (Score:5, Informative)

    by hwstar ( 35834 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2024 @03:07PM (#65020211)

    What do you expect?

    The engineers in the 70's has no concept of attack surfaces and the fact that it became so easy for malicious outfits to connect to an SS7 network. When SS7 was designed, the Bell System kept it close to their chest and only allowed themselves and recognized independent phone companies to interconnect using it.

    Nowadays, just about any fly-by-night phone company can gain access to the SS7 data network.

    We need to move away from these antique protocols.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      Nowadays, just about any fly-by-night phone company can gain access to the SS7 data network.

      I mean it's likely worse than that.. For about $1000 a month people are able subscribe to ISDN PRI lines which are SS7 signalled over the D-Channel. Before Voice over IP started becoming popular.. just about every sizable business would have ISDN connections to the phone company to handle all their phone lines and feed their PBX. And a PRI would be most efficient any place that needed more than 20 external ph

    • Not even kidding, we were posting here about SS7 in the 90's on the ECHELON articles.

      At first we wanted to replace it with something secure but then we realized the IC wanted it insecure for illegal domestic spying.

      Many crypto wallets were stolen via SS7 hijacking.

      IIRC only Pixel 6+ doesn't allow raw memory access over the SS7 modem interface.

      This isn't lazy, it's enemy action.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      The engineers in the 70's has no concept of attack surfaces and the fact that it became so easy for malicious outfits to connect to an SS7 network. When SS7 was designed, the Bell System kept it close to their chest and only allowed themselves and recognized independent phone companies to interconnect using it.

      Nowadays, just about any fly-by-night phone company can gain access to the SS7 data network.

      We need to move away from these antique protocols.

      Well, the SS7 network was designed to be a trusted network

  • DHS has missed several dozen other countries spying on Americans of importance to them.

  • There have been presentations at infosec conferences like Blackhat/DefCon, etc. for maybe 20 years on this problem. One can hack the telecom system in second/third world country and use it to monitor any number and avoid attribution.
  • Water is wet and the sky is blue. Also, many other countries routinely spy on American citizens.

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