How To DDoS a Federal Wiretap

alphadogg writes "Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania say they've discovered a way to circumvent the networking technology used by law enforcement to tap phone lines in the US. The flaws they've found 'represent a serious threat to the accuracy and completeness of wiretap records used for both criminal investigation and as evidence in trial,' the researchers say in their paper, set to be presented Thursday at a computer security conference in Chicago. Following up on earlier work on evading analog wiretap devices called loop extenders, the Penn researchers took a deep look at the newer technical standards used to enable wiretapping on telecommunication switches. They found that while these newer devices probably don't suffer from many of the bugs they'd found in the loop extender world, they do introduce new flaws. In fact, wiretaps could probably be rendered useless if the connection between the switches and law enforcement are overwhelmed with useless data, something known as a denial of service (DOS) attack."

Comments

Pithy Comment

[Mikkeles]

Great news! Thank you very much!

Re:Stupid

[Foobar of Borg]

If spies/criminals/terrorists/politicians are stupid enough to use plain language over the phone to plan their dastardly deeds, then they deserve to be put into prison.

Indeed. And remember, Mary had a little lamb, the cow jumped over the moon, but most of all, I did it my way.