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FBI's Smartphone Surveillance Tool Explained In Court Battle
concealment writes with news that a court battle has brought to light details on how the FBI's "stingray" surveillance tool works, and how they used it with Verizon's help to collect evidence about an alleged identity thief. Quoting:
"Air cards are devices that plug into a computer and use the wireless cellular networks of phone providers to connect the computer to the internet. The devices are not phones and therefore don’t have the ability to receive incoming calls, but in this case Rigmaiden asserts that Verizon reconfigured his air card to respond to surreptitious voice calls from a landline controlled by the FBI. The FBI calls, which contacted the air card silently in the background, operated as pings to force the air card into revealing its location. In order to do this, Verizon reprogrammed the device so that when an incoming voice call arrived, the card would disconnect from any legitimate cell tower to which it was already connected, and send real-time cell-site location data to Verizon, which forwarded the data to the FBI. This allowed the FBI to position its stingray in the neighborhood where Rigmaiden resided. The stingray then "broadcast a very strong signal" to force the air card into connecting to it, instead of reconnecting to a legitimate cell tower, so that agents could then triangulate signals coming from the air card and zoom-in on Rigmaiden’s location. To make sure the air card connected to the FBI’s simulator, Rigmaiden says that Verizon altered his air card’s Preferred Roaming List so that it would accept the FBI’s stingray as a legitimate cell site and not a rogue site, and also changed a data table on the air card designating the priority of cell sites so that the FBI’s fake site was at the top of the list."
Chris Paget was able to demo similar behavior at DEFCON 18, and he sure didn't need Verizon's help to do so.
Pretty sure the FCC wanted to bust him on stage, actually.
John
This is basically a supply chain attack. People worry about others breaking into their devices, but the user has to trust the device supplier not to tamper with it before they receive it. This situation is analogous to your PC phoning home to Microsoft for updates, then having a special version sent to your machine at the request of the FBI. No matter how careful you are about what software you run or what security software you employ, Microsoft can compromise your machine.
Issuing a custom radio firmware for a data only device, so that it responds to a telephone network signal demonstrates that verizon is willing to place nonstandard firmware on devices on their network, for the express purposes of aiding investigations that lack proper warrants.
This is a very bad thing Verizon. A Very Bad Thing.
Don't underestimate the impact that losing public confidence can have on your business. Being so self-conceited as to feel that you don't have to worry because you have cornered the market would only add fuel to the fire.
Plan you PR damage control messages carefully. Smile, you're on candid camera.
Clearly our technological advances are ahead of the law and it's time for those 2 to sync up in a realistic way.
Ok, so this is a guy who does identity fraud.
I'm not crying for him
He's lucky to even have access to due process as far as I'm concerned However, that your very own devices can be used against you in such ways, which means that the trust you have in your provider is broken, seems unethical.
If the FBI and/or other agencies require such abilities, perhaps then, companies such as Verizon should place this in their contracts something like "authorities can use your devices to track you and/or use your data for any of their investigations as they see fit".
Transparency would be nice.
All I know is that, I've got nothing to hide, so I don't care, but, for those who do, they may have to switch to another provider....
That's one of the issues in this case. A Stingray is not discriminating and could impact other cellular devices. The FBI also claims they "throw away" all data that is not pertinent to their investigation, meaning there is no way to determine what they did or did not see regarding other people's communications. (Kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.)
There is also the difference between wiretaps and pen trace registers. Wiretaps require a warrant, but pen traces don't. The Stingray doesn't record the call or data contents, so it could be claimed to be more like a pen trace. But a Stingray is actively pinging the target's machine to generate data to be used against the owner, which is a completely different use (abuse?) of the technology.
Anything like this would be perfectly legal with a warrant. The real question is if this is legal without one.
John
"When they came for the scumbags, I did not speak out, for I was not a scumbag..."
It's a little more complicated than that.
It seems Verizon pushed an update to his specific wireless card. This update allowed it to receive phone calls, thus allowing them to "ping" him in particular. It also set the preferred tower list so that the stingray would always be connected to first.
The fun thing is that by modifying his wireless card, the FBI has "planted" a tracker on him. That requires a warrant. If this guy was such a big deal, then it shouldn't have been hard to get the warrant. The problem is the FBI didn't want anyone, even the judges, to know what cards they held. So even when they got there court order, it wasn't a warrant, and they misled the judge who issued the order. That's a big no no.
So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
Got it, thanks. I missed equating the change to his card as "planting a tracking device", which makes total sense, at least to me. So now, it's up to the court to decide if the law sees those as equivalent activities, requiring equivalent oversight.
Oh well. Better to let 100 scoundrels roam free than to wrongly imprison one man.
John
Um all sorts of AirCards, USB 3G dongles, etc can be made to make and recieve calls.
All the Huwaei 3G usb modems that are sold by telco's here in Aus/NZ i've managed to get to make and recieve calls. (Yeah you need to use a USB headset or something, but you already do for skype and voip.)
Is there any point to it? I don't know, but you can.
Just like most tablets can be made to make/receive phone calls even though they aren't considered phones by the law.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.