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Hackers' Flying Drone Now Eavesdrops On GSM Phones

Posted by Soulskill on from the it-slices-it-dices-it-makes-juilenne-fries dept.

Sparrowvsrevolution writes "At the Black Hat and Defcon security conferences in Las Vegas next week, Mike Tassey and Richard Perkins plan to show the crowd of hackers a year's worth of progress on their Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform, or WASP, the second year Tassey and Perkins have displayed the 14-pound, six-foot-long, six-foot wingspan unmanned aerial vehicle. The WASP, built from a retired Army target drone converted from a gasoline engine to electric batteries, is equipped with an HD camera, a cigarette-pack-sized on-board Linux computer packed with network-hacking tools, including the BackTrack testing toolset and a custom-built 340 million word dictionary for brute-force guessing of passwords, and eleven antennae. On top of cracking Wi-Fi networks, the upgraded WASP now also performs a new trick: impersonating the GSM cell phone towers used by AT&T and T-Mobile to trick phones into connecting to the plane's antenna rather than their carrier, allowing the drone to record conversations and text messages on 32 gigs of storage."

11 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. RC planes will be illegal in by rbrausse · · Score: 3, Insightful

    3, 2, ....

    cool toy, and the rationale "The number one reason we did this was because we were told it wouldn’t be possible” is THE reason why we as mankind are still innovative (okay, "because I can" is similar important)

    1. Re:RC planes will be illegal in by ArhcAngel · · Score: 2

      I believe Rupert Murdoch expressed an interest in this last year.

      --
      "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
  2. Doesn't matter to me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm a Sprint customer!

  3. If government was doing this by ugen · · Score: 2

    If government was doing this - it'd be an outcry of "oh, the privacy". Hackers - "cool stuff".
    I don't like these guys any more than I like the government and don't trust them any further than I could throw them.

    1. Re:If government was doing this by Gr33nJ3ll0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If the government was doing this it would be more than one, wouldn't be demoed to the public, and would be abused by the police to stalk ex-girlfriends. I suspect that in these guys hands it's slightly safer, though all bets are off if News Corp gets their hands on it.

    2. Re:If government was doing this by rbrausse · · Score: 2

      I don't like these guys any more than I like the government and don't trust them any further than I could throw them.

      you have a point here. But you can throw those 2 guys much farther than the ~ 5M people of the executive branch of the US government...

    3. Re:If government was doing this by element-o.p. · · Score: 3, Informative

      I don't like these guys any more than I like the government and don't trust them any further than I could throw them.

      Tassey and Perkins will demonstrate the WASP’s high-flying exploits at next week’s Black Hat Security Conference in Las Vegas...Tassey, a security consultant to Wall Street and the U.S. intelligence community and Perkins, a senior security engineer supporting the U.S. government [emphasis mine]...

      In this case, the difference between "hackers" and "the government" appears to be negligible, at best.

      --
      MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
    4. Re:If government was doing this by houghi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In the US they do not need one. They have direct access to the towers already. In other countries they already have this.

      Remember the specifics that Bin Laden did not use cell phones? The reason this was mentioned was because if he had, they would have been faster in finding him. And how would they have done that? By using what they already have.

      This all from the standard 'news' places, so basically a reading of the press releases.

      So not only do I think they have it, I know they have it and they told us so.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  4. Information is good! by bshourd · · Score: 2

    A lot of people seem to be upset that this hack exists. It's used for evil, after all.

    But that's not the point. Aren't you *glad* that you know this is possible? Now that we are aware this can be done, we can start trying to protect against it. The real crime here would have been for these hackers to see a vulnerability, and ignore it. Then anybody else who found the vulnerability could exploit it without knowledge of it even existing. That's a hundred times more dangerous.

    Kudos to these guys on their brilliance, and ethical kudos on unveiling it. Without people like this, we would never know that we were in danger. Although, as they say, ignorance is bliss.

  5. Emergency cell tower by Viadd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How often have you heard of people who are lost in the woods/at sea, and who could have called for help if they had cell phone connectivity?

    They could fly one of these as part of a search. Even if the owner isn't actively using the phone, the drone could detect the electronic serial number of each phone in its coverage area and match it against the lost person's phone.

    1. Re:Emergency cell tower by Thail · · Score: 4, Informative

      After Hurricane Katrina, T-Mobile did something very similar. The mounted what is commonly referred to as a COW (Cell on Wheels) onto a helicopter, then flew over the flooded areas. If a cell phone attempted to connect to the tower (Any GSM handset, didn't have to be t-mobile) they were then able to fly around and triangulate the position and find survivors.