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Hackers' Flying Drone Now Eavesdrops On GSM Phones
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."
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)
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?
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.
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.