Feds Have a High-Speed Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier

An anonymous reader writes "An unnamed U.S. wireless carrier maintains an unfiltered, unmonitored DS-3 line from its internal network to a facility in Quantico, Virginia, according to Babak Pasdar, a computer security consultant who did work for the company in 2003. Customer voice calls, billing records, location information and data traffic are all allegedly exposed. A similar claim was leveled against Verizon Wireless in a 2006 lawsuit."

Comments

Re:CALEA

[faedle]

This is precisely what this is.

NEWS FLASH: EVERY wireline and wireless carrier has facility like this between their central offices and Quantico, Virginia. I can tell you for an absolute fact that a medium-sized cable company operating in the Rocky Mountain region has similar facilities between their main office and the FBI Academy, because I helped install it.

Welcome to the world post-CALEA.

Re:CALEA

[faedle]

Because the FBI Academy in Quantico is the clearinghouse for the FBI for all CALEA wiretaps, and acts as a "one-stop shop" for carriers wishing to comply with the law.

Use the Goog. It's your friend.

Re:CALEA

[statemachine]

If you read the article, you'll notice that it isn't some "wire-frame guy" but a security consultant hired to specifically address network security. So he'd have access to all the routers and their ACLs and other firewalling hardware, which would allow him to make such a judgement.

who's in trouble

[jameseyjamesey]

Has anyone here had an experience where they were busted by federal wire-tapping? Does anyone personally know anyone who has been busted by federal wire tapping?

It doesn't add up

[Derling Whirvish]

My BS detector is pinging.

the transmission line provided the Quantico recipient direct access to all content and all information concerning the origin and termination of telephone calls placed on the Verizon Wireless network as well as the actual content of calls. The contents of my cell phone calls made locally intracity west of the Mississippi DO NOT get routed through a single line on the east coast that terminates at Quantico. It's absurd to think that all of Verizon's cell calls are routed to that link. Occam's razor.

Re:Do the math

[neowolf]

I thought the same thing...

With overhead- throughput on a DS3 is only about 43Mbps. All things considered- that's not a very large pipe (tube?) at all, especially considering the amount of traffic it would have to carry for wholesale surveillance. There are a lot of small to mid-sized companies that have OC3s, including mine. You can get one for only around $3k/month with the right carrier/contract. If anything- an OC-3 would be slightly more impressive, but considering the millions of customers and transactions that would need to be monitored- that also is unlikely.

I'm with several others- I think the story is BS. For them to actually do what everyone is paranoid about- they would probably need an OC-24 (~1.2Gbps) from every single large data center/central office in the country. They would also need a lot of CPU cycles and manpower to actually monitor that traffic.

I'm not saying they don't, but it does make a single DS3 from one carrier seem pretty irrelevant. If they are doing it- I'd love to see their QoS implementation in action. :)

You are kidding.

[professorguy]

OK, let's see, we've got a secret bugging system that no one is allowed to discuss, that is run by unknown people and has unknown capabilities. This situation is ripe for abuse since no one is allowed to provide oversight.

So if a bunch of sleazoids in Virginia want to listen to your daughter talk dirty to her boyfriend, there's no way to know and even if you did, nothing you can do about it.

And yet the remedy is legislative? Really? Yeah, if we pass a law to forbid casual spying on domestic citizens for no reason other than prurient interest, that'll take care of it!

I feel safer already.

Re:CALEA

[Shotgun]

I've worked in telecom for years now writing code to operate the hardware.

Every single design for a new piece of telecom equipment includes provisions for lawful intercept. That provision working is more important than any other piece of the system. It can ship even if it is rebooting every 24 hours, but it won't ship if lawful intercept isn't working 100%.