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Cellphones China

China Accused of Spying On Americans Via Caribbean Phone Networks (newsweek.com) 53

Posted by EditorDavid from the found-signal dept.
"A mobile security expert has accused China of exploiting cellphone networks in the Caribbean to conduct 'mass surveillance' on Americans," reports Newsweek: Gary Miller, a former vice president of network security at California-based analytics company Mobileum, told The Guardian he had amassed evidence of espionage conducted via "decades-old vulnerabilities" in the global telecommunications system. While not explicitly mentioned in the report, the claims appear to be centered around Signaling System 7 (SS7), a communications protocol that routes calls and data around the world and has long been known to have inherent security weaknesses.

According to Miller, his analysis of "signals data" from the Caribbean has shown China was using a state-controlled mobile operator to "target, track, and intercept phone communications of U.S. phone subscribers," The Guardian reported. Miller claimed China appeared to exploit Caribbean operators to conduct surveillance on Americans as they were traveling, alleging that attacks on cell phones between 2018 to 2020 likely affected "tens of thousands" of U.S. mobile users in the region.

"Once you get into the tens of thousands, the attacks qualify as mass surveillance," the mobile researcher said, noting the tactic is "primarily for intelligence collection and not necessarily targeting high-profile targets."
Interesting quote from the Guardian's original story: "We have an illusion of security when we talk on our mobile phones," said James Lewis, the director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). "People don't realise that we are under a sustained espionage attack on anything that connects to a network, and that this is just another example of a really aggressive and pretty sophisticated campaign."
Thanks to chill (Slashdot reader #34,294) for the story!
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China Accused of Spying On Americans Via Caribbean Phone Networks More

China Accused of Spying On Americans Via Caribbean Phone Networks

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  • Grannies who still use the phone app?

    • Yes. They've already got the kids covered via TikTok.

      • amazing.
        all of you are missing the point of where the spying is happening.
        your boss walks up to you and says.
        you have to go spy on the mentally crippled american capitalists.
        their weak point is in the caribbean.
        sun tan oil and warm beaches and great food.
        best spy mission ever.
        trumps twitter account has been hacked.
        so just make stuff up.
        who is going to know
    • In reality, America also spies on everyone too. So at the end of the day Slashdot is just proving they're government propaganda outlets pushing one sided state messaging. :s

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Yeah, but America doesn't have to subvert island cell networks and settle for spying on travellers like peasants. They just park a few hundred-metre radio dishes in geosynchronous orbit and slurp up all the signals.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          Don't be silly, they just wander up to tech executives with a letter and threaten to destroy them and their company if they do not obey. They do not need to hack anything but have backdoors built right in and an office in tech corp to hover up ALL the data, never know what they might need to use, abuse, twist about, to destroy anyone they want to at anytime they want to.

          Yeah, my next phone be a Linux phone preferable direct out of China. No more Android and definitely not Windows anal probe 10.

  • Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gavagai80 ( 1275204 ) on Sunday December 20, 2020 @06:36PM (#60852148) Homepage

    China spying on ordinary Americans is no threat. Not sure why they bother, probably it's just to try to find important officials and anti-China dissident exiles among the clutter. They have no power over Americans. It's the Americans spying on you who you should be worried about, because they're the ones who can put you in jail.

    • Why China go to all the trouble if the data is of no use to them?

      • Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sjames ( 1099 ) on Sunday December 20, 2020 @07:08PM (#60852222) Homepage Journal

        To find the ex-pats still in contact with Chinese Citizens, important officials, and leaders of competing businesses. That data is of value, the rest of us are just noise.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Practise or fun.

        The question you should be asking is why didn't America want the known vulnerabilities to be fixed? It's as if America wanted the protocols to be insecure...fought against making them stronger...why would that be...

      • Why China go to all the trouble if the data is of no use to them?

        Because it is not much trouble. Storage is extremely cheap. A single tape can hold half a petabyte. Voice data compresses well. Keyword scanning can be done with off-peak computing capacity.

        With a big enough haystack, they will find some needles.

        • They still had to go to the trouble of taking control of the infrastructure. Not like they sent a guy in with a flash drive.

    • Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Sunday December 20, 2020 @08:10PM (#60852350)

      China has demonstrated time and again that they're deeply involved in corporate espionage of all sorts. China collectively has its finger in a lot of American corporate pies. Do you think they'd be above using some privileged information gathered over this channel? Just because they can't send armed thugs to correct your bad thoughts doesn't mean they can't harm you or your interests in other ways.

      I've never understood why people dismiss the damage Chinese espionage can do (even if not personal) when they have a *very* long history of proving otherwise. And just because I'm not okay with the US government spying on all its citizens doesn't mean I'm fine with the Chinese doing it either.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      The reason this is not an issue is that most of us, who have analytical skills, knows our communication is not secure unless we secure it. Any EM signal can be intercepted and decided if there is sufficient incentive.

      The reason it can be useful to monitor phones it that not everyone understand the risk. A good recent example is the POTUS calling a governor on y The governors unsecured mobile phone. This shows a significant lack of security protocol and an incentive for unfriendly actors to monitor.

      A fu

    • What about the American politicians making millions off of business deals with the Chinese Communist party? Should we be worried about them?

    • They have no power over Americans.

      That's really cute that you believe China is above doing renditions [cbsnews.com]. An American goes missing in the Caribbean? Few will look at China as opposed to local criminals.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      China spying on ordinary Americans is no threat. Not sure why they bother, probably it's just to try to find important officials and anti-China dissident exiles among the clutter. They have no power over Americans. It's the Americans spying on you who you should be worried about, because they're the ones who can put you in jail.

      Unless you intend for you and your family to remain in the US, China holds a lot of influence over Americans. I know there's a pandemic going on right now, and it's really blunted wh

    • There are multiple reasons why a hostile foreign government would spy on US citizens in the Caribbean. Here are just a couple of examples:-

      1. Tax Dodgers
      There are multiple, conveniently accessible tax havens in the Caribbean, perfect for a US citizen who is trying to hide their wealth. And when that citizen visits - maybe to talk to their accountant - they may end up having indiscreet phone conversations that will make excellent blackmail material. People illegally hiding their wealth to evade taxes are
    • What you're saying is only true up to a point. When they find out some things about an 'average American' that can be used as leverage against them, to turn them into unwilling operatives, then it's a 'threat'. Some mid-level exec at some company that's a contractor for the U.S. government or U.S. military is discovered to be having an extra-marital affair. They have copies of voicemails and text messages between him and his lover. He has just enough access to information useful to the Chinese intelligence

  • Like the USA, but small scale? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by chris_uvic ( 1708538 ) on Sunday December 20, 2020 @06:36PM (#60852150)
    So we have another example of China doing something that the USA / NSA had done for decades, but China is doing it on a smaller scale? Don't worry, China, you'll catch up soon!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's only bad when China does it.
      --
      WindBlown.

  • Not that the overall claim isn't believable., but - does he have any actual security bonafides?

    I mean, we've seen people with a music degree in similar roles... and his other roles with the analytics company were apparently "vice president of client solutions" and "vice president of global data solutions". And now, he's running a film and media company. So I'd like to know what actual security work he's done.

  • Oh horrors! The Chinese saw all your selfies with Pina Coladas.

    Yeah. They also saw a few of you setting up offshore bank accounts. But you thought US authorities weren't watching that as well?

    • If you have access to the phone network as a trusted telco, you can spy on far away people. The phone network is hilariously insecure. The security is based on trusting other telcos not to do bad stuff. The line of defense is between the consumers and the operators.

  • And US intelligence missed that? (Score:3)

    by manu0601 ( 2221348 ) on Sunday December 20, 2020 @06:58PM (#60852198)
    The news is surprising. Such a large spying operation should be too obvious to be missed by US intelligence agencies. And US should have used that knowledge to name and shame China.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      They were too busy laughing at how quaint it is to do signals intelligence from the ground.

  • anybody surprised? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 )
    This is exactly why we need to stop Chinese hardware/software, coming to the West.
    Fact is, that China and Russia are no different.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Because America would never do anything similar would it...

    • This is exactly why we need to stop Chinese hardware/software, coming to the West.

      Yeah, Americans who are too broke to eat can use their $600 stimulus check to slap a down payment on their $12,000 American-made iPhone 15.

      That should go over like a screen door on a Chinese submarine.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jodido ( 1052890 )
      You left out the irony tag from your post

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The fact is, the software (and hardware) were insecure due to American pressure to keep it insecure.
      It's in the f'kn summary

      "decades-old vulnerabilities"

      America wanted it that way, decades ago China and other countries weren't a threat. America was happy to scoop up all the info. Now other countries can too, suddenly after decades of purposefully weakening the standards to make intel gathering wasier, America wants to cry about it?
      This is why you don't let America set the global standards.

  • Phone systems are not secure, literally by design (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheNameOfNick ( 7286618 ) on Sunday December 20, 2020 @08:23PM (#60852382)
    No country in the world wants secure telecommunications. They all spy and they all know everybody else is spying. Nobody is going to change anything. Technically it would be trivial to create a secure system, but it won't happen. Nothing secure ever becomes a standard. Trying to change this is at best an exercise in futility. Worst case you get a lifetime achievement award for your unfinished work.
    • If this was about spying. You could secure/encrypt the control channel while keeping the voice in the clear. The is entirely inept system designers who thought no one would ever look behind the curtain.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        This was purposefully designng the curtain to be transparent, since America assumed they would be the only ones looking.
        Now that other countries are also looking, America suddenly complains about the lack of security...Why not decades ago, or every year since when the standards have been shown to be lacking security. It's hardly news. It's always been that way. It was put that way intentionally. It was kept that way intentionally too.
      • SS7 was issued in 1980. It was intended to replace in-band (MF) signalling which had zero privacy and could be spoofed by trivial electronics ("blue box") from a subscriber line. SS7 originally was carried within telco and national networks and between networks with whatever agreed levels of trust and looking the other way. The signalling network was constructed (in the US) of Signal Transfer Points which, under the implementation technology available at the time, were multi-rack complexes, typically in

  • america accused of spying on everyone else (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    via almost every other phone or data network.

  • Spoofed SS7 packets were great for free long distance calls, and were the real reason telecoms abandoned them. (Anything that cost them money or prevented them from making money they deal with quickly. Anything about privacy? nah.... who cares?!)
  • But ofcourse they bitch about it, as only the US should be the only one spying on it's own citizens AND the rest of the world....

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