Slashdot Mirror
Guide to DIY Wiretapping
Geeks are Sexy writes "ITSecurity.com has a nice piece this week on how wiretapping works and how you can protect yourself from people who wants to snoop into your life. From the article 'Even if you aren't involved in a criminal case or illegal operation, it's incredibly easy to set up a wiretap or surveillance system on any type of phone. Don't be surprised to learn that virtually anyone could be spying on you for any reason.'" Maybe I'm on the wrong track here, but I guess I assumed that wiretapping now happened in secret rooms at the telco, and not by affixing something physically to a wire in your home, but I'll definitely be aware next time I hear a stranger breathing next time I'm stuck on hold.
If someone is dumb enough to leave the microphone connected on an intercept phone, they deserve to get caught.
The official, albeit illegal kind do occur at the telco, at least these days. Before modern switching a residential tap would have be the way it was done.
Most of the land line suggestions in that article don't seem to bother with taking care of the noticeable voltage drop caused by adding an extra phone to a call. You can tell when somebody else in your house picks up the phone while you're on it because the person on the other end gets quieter. The same thing would happen if you plugged a phone into the line outside your house. I thought professional surveillance systems did something to make up for this, so there's no noticeable change in volume when the wiretapper starts listening.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
Still, if you're feeling paranoid, by all means check your phones. It's true, nosy neighbors could indeed be spying on you. Never underestimate the average person's voyeurism urges...
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
It's the 90s bomb making/revenge/wiretapping text file guides all over again. Only this time it's Web 2.0
Because how can you wiretap something with no wires? It must be completely immune to wiretapping XD.
Yes, because corporate espionage is so often carried out by nefarious time travelers from the 70s and 80s. This gem should also include look for men with wavy hair and bright rays from the nearest time gate.
From TFA
"Listen to other people's calls through your own basic telephone by hooking up your phone to a part of the original line that runs outside the house of your target."
I can just see the Darwin awards on this one when some idiot mistakes the main power line for a phone line when looking for the "red and green wires". ZAP
If your listening device uses capacitive coupling, then there's no current drain to draw down the nominal 50 volts across an on-hook POTS line. Radio Shack used to sell a little box that coupled like that and also would turn on a recorder when the line went off-hook. Also, since it's a listening only device, there's no risk of being overheard while breathing heavily.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
They recommend Skype, which encrypts its traffic.
... you can simply open it up and look at it. Computers not so much.
But the computer is even more vulnerable than a phone to bugs. Tons of malware exists that can "own" a computer, which has given rise to an entire new security market. A phone is easy to tell if it has a bug
It also recommends using a cellphone for confidential calls. Just make sure neither provider uses ATT.
Just wanted to say thanks for these articles. Now every single one of our paranoid customers is going to call us up and demand an inspection of their line.
I just want to get this off my chest for most people.... You aren't interesting enough to tap, nobody cares about your private business.
The 80s called and their want their wiretapping tech back.
This is great if you're worried about the neighbor kid listening in, but not for anyone serious. Wiretapping is done at the telco level and you can't tell you're being tapped. In the digital age there is no clicking, breathing, voltage drops or any other indication. There is a big long checklist when implementing a CALEA node for making certain there is no way the target can tell they're being monitored.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Every method I have seen so far requires physical access.
/.!
Quite frankly, it's a threat, but no more than the famous slashdot meme: If you have physical access you have root.
Who would abandon their celly? I take mine to the bathroom w/ me. I don't let strangers in my house, and it doesn't leave my pocket unless I am making/recieving a call.
I think this is really just FUD to freak people out. Hey whats that? Why does my phoen blink? Oh, it's just a reply to a post on
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
The article also links to this product. They never had toys this fscking cool when I was a kid.
You mean there's a device you could attach to a phone line to listen to a call? Amazing!
For people in the know, there's an easier method to listen in on calls which is only detectable by the phone company: a Direct Access Test Unit or DATU. Find one of these "secret" numbers on the exchange your victim is on and you have the ability to snoop on their calls using the phone company's own test equipment. Messing with these numbers is also a very quick way to go to jail, but you sorta run that risk with an illegal wiretap anyway (unless you work in the Executive branch).
So true, though I'm about to have to add a land line back in the mix again unfortunately.
Went out with my wife a couple weeks ago, got a baby sitter. Left our contact numbers with her. She asks "Where's the phone?". Er...
Had to leave my cell phone behind for her to use in case of emergency.
Won't be many more years before my son has friends calling. I either leave him unable to be contacted by phone, let his friends call my cell, or get a land line.
Nope, landlines aren't dead yet and won't be for some time I'm sure.
No Comment.
Couple of years ago, one of my neighbors narced on me because they thought I was playing video games too loud. This led to me getting a set of wireless headphones to listen to TV with.
:/
It completely surprised me the first time I put them on and couldn't get them to tune into the TV's transmitter because all the channels were full of wireless phone conversations.
Sadly, none of my neighbors have any secrets worth listening to. And even worst, most of them seem to have no issues with taking the phone into the shitter with them
In revenge, I've hooked up the transmitter to a cheap dvd player and leave anime porn running on a loop just before going to work, every few days....
This is old information which didn't ever work properly and is increasingly irrelevant today.
Coming up next: how to get free long-distance by whistling down the phone ...
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
As a embedded software developer at a major telco equipment manufacturer I can verify that when the government wants a wiretap, they can do it easily at the telco. Several times telcos came to us and said "the government has asked for a wiretap how can we use your equipment to comply?" The process to do the wiretap was the same used to setup a conference bridge, which digitally duplicates the DS0 or T1. The government could then get a digital copy of all voice/data of the lines.
Remember how easy it was to listen on conversations over cellular phones back then? A piece of tinfoil or a soldered wire (some even allowed you to enter this mode via keypad) was all you needed to listen in on conversations. Not that I did any of this stuff... not me, no sir.
"Who modded this informative? Whoever it is must've been smokin' some of that martian pot!"
I remember when I was younger, going around with a handset with roach clips at the end of the wire, opening phone boxes and plugging in. It was always a bit of a surprise when we tapped an active line, but MAN! So easy to do. I don't know if things are still setup the same way these days - I know the phone boxes around here are locked - not sure if the same key opens all of them anymore, but yeah - easy to tap a phone line? Sure, as long as you don't mind sitting in the bushes! I'm sure there is technology that can make it easier than that, these days.
Oh, the above story? Not me, of course. When I say I, I'm talking about someone else I heard stories about, of course. I'd never do anything remotely approaching illegal, such as making long distance phone calls on other people's lines. That's crazy!
Why would I want to wiretap myself?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
That won't help me: all my calls consist of heavy breathing.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Why only phone conversations, when a laser microphone can listen in on all conversations. They are also easy to build.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I sometimes feel bad about flaming Skype. They really are more resistant to eavesdropping than most everything else, and it's nice they used AES256. They almost got it right.
But saying it's mathematically impossible to crack 'em is bullshit, because Skype's design is flawed (in at least one way that we know of -- and there's a lot we don't know about it, because it's closed and hasn't been really audited by crypto-nerds -- that's Skype first problem). AES256 is useless if the key itself has been compromised by MitM, and Skype's design allows that (that's Skype's second problem). Skype depends on a central server to introduce identities to one another, and that central point is potentially subject to compromise (or coercion). There's no reason VoIP users can't (in many cases, at least) cert each other directly, but unfortunately, that's not how Skype works.
Skype can be tapped, and all this talk about how its heavy crypto prevents that, is a smokescreen. AES is believed to be a strong link in this chain, but don't forget that we're talking about a chain.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The Government avoids spying by using STU phones. If tapping stays in the news, I wonder if projects like OpenMoko will incorporate similar techniques. It's good enough for gov't TS - so it is probably good enough for me chatting with my friend about what to do this weekend. It would only be a matter of time before cracking these streams would be easily doable, but at least there would be a small barrier to unfettered access.
About a year after 9-11, I was talking on my phone with my wife. Now, to really understand this story, you have to know that my wife is from Iran, her father was a former General or the Air Force there, and she knows multiple folks who had fairly high positions at one time in the government. And she calls home all the time. We spend 50-60 hours a month connected to Iran via phone.
So I'm sitting in a bookstore, and she calls. Right in the middle of the call there is a strange squeaking noise, reminiscent of digital audio "static" noises, sort of a cross between a cd skip and a modem. Sudden it ends, and we are no longer on the phone alone. Somehow our conversation was crossed with another cell phone conversation.
The strange part is this. The other folks now joined to our conversation were also from Iran. They were speaking Persian.
After about 30 seconds or mass confusion, the call went dead. For about 5 minutes my wife's phone and mine refused to connect out to make a call. Full signal, no access. When we finally got back in contact with each other, she told me that the other people on the line were trying to meet at a restaurant on the other side of Dallas. One had just landed at DFW from Frankfurt, on his way home from Iran. She understood them, I don't know the language.
Now, what are the chances of 4 mobile phones, separated by 20 miles a piece, suddenly crossing conversations at the servers, and being the same fairly limited ethnic/nationality group that just happens to be on the "Axis of Evil" list?
I tell this story to my freinds under the title "My conversation with the NSA" Since then it is a running joke for my freinds to randomly yell "bomb", "assassinate", "Jihad" and "Mohamed" while talking to me on the phone.
There have been numerous instances of "terrorist sympathizers" who hunt around online for people who say things they don't like, about their religion, their objectives, etc. They attempt to shut the blog down, even to discover the identity of the blogger to cause further trouble.
Can you imagine if this grew to further proportion, where you would be in danger of being "discovered" by some amateur terrorist or terrorists, who decided to make your life a living hell, or even to cut it short?
Sure, you had Theo van Gogh killed because he made a film that "they" didn't like, but what if they start aiming a bit "lower" on the food chain, start cyberstalking and tapping the phone lines of some guy who's an outspoking blogger or letter-to-the-editor afficianado?
How do you protect yourself at that level of obscurity?
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Especially in field operations knows how insecure our phone pedestals (the little green and brown enclosers along your neighborhood roadds) are. Typically they use just a standard hex wrench to open. Dress in the right clothing, grab your butt set and go to town. Commercial bldgs are not much different. If you can talk the lingo and have a tool bet, its not hard to use a little social engineering to get into building telco closets. Having worked in telco for many years I can't count how many times I have been let into bldgs by just saying "I am with xyz telecom, and tenant abc needs us to work on their phone". 9 times out of 10 I don't have to present ID, they don't call the tenant they simply unlock the door. I have worked in telco closets where I have tapped onto a copper pair to hear lawyers discussing divorce cases with a cleint. Or a stock broker discussing financials with one of their clients.