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CBS Reports 'Suspicious' Cell Phone Tower Activity In Washington DC (cbsnews.com)
"An unusually high amount of suspicious cell phone activity in the nation's capital has caught the attention of the Department of Homeland Security, raising concerns that U.S. officials are being monitored by a foreign entity," reports CBS News:
The issue was first reported in the Washington Free Beacon, but a source at telecom security firm ESD America confirmed the spike in suspicious activity to CBS News. ESD America, hired preemptively for a DHS pilot program this January called ESD Overwatch, first noticed suspicious activity around cell phone towers in certain parts of the capital, including near the White House. This kind of activity can indicate that someone is monitoring specific individuals or their devices... According to the ESD America source, the first such spike of activity was in D.C. but there have been others in other parts of the country. Based on the type of technology used, the source continued, it is likely that the suspicious activity was being conducted by a foreign nation.
The news coincides with a letter sent to the DHS by two congressmen "deeply concerned" about vulnerabilities in the SS7 protocol underlying U.S. cellular networks, according to an article shared by Slashdot reader Trailrunner7. Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Ted Lieu are asking if the agency has enough resources to address the threat. "Although there have been a few news stories about this topic, we suspect that most Americans simply have no idea how easy it is for a relatively sophisticated adversary to track their movements, tap their calls, and hack their smartphones."
The news coincides with a letter sent to the DHS by two congressmen "deeply concerned" about vulnerabilities in the SS7 protocol underlying U.S. cellular networks, according to an article shared by Slashdot reader Trailrunner7. Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Ted Lieu are asking if the agency has enough resources to address the threat. "Although there have been a few news stories about this topic, we suspect that most Americans simply have no idea how easy it is for a relatively sophisticated adversary to track their movements, tap their calls, and hack their smartphones."
Everyone is being wire tapped oh shit...
"Based on the type of technology used, the source continued, it is likely that the suspicious activity was being conducted by a foreign nation."
Is that because the US based three-letter-agencies just tap in at the service provider level?
It's just the President's Russian friends making sure he's safe from Obama's wiretaps.
is the preeminent spying, wiretapping, snooping, eavesdropping entity on Earth. Hell, we invented most of it. We should be proud that our snoopiness is so great that everyone wants to imitate us. What could possibly go wrong?
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Every country on earth, barring North Korea has an embassy within pissing distance of the White House and Capitol and CBS "discovers" there's espionage. What grade did these people graduate from?
I'm shocked to find out this is going on in this establishment.
the united states already has secretly deployments of armorments preventing these types of attacks. the attacks are thus normally conducted by the United States itself, sometimes in cooperation with foreign nations, or the government allows the attacks to occur.
Signals Intelligence is secretly scanning us all from space, giving us electron spin resonance scans.
There's no attack we aren't prepared for.
Why is this in the media? To spread false fear onto the population.
https://www.drrobertduncan.com...
TFA says the exploit can be used remotely "thousands of miles away". So which is it? Local or remote? The article contradicts itself.
Cellphones don't have wires to tapp.
The NSA has taps on the hardware, but other agencies do not. If people are trying to do things outside of NSA control, they would need to come up with their own taps.
The US has let security go to shit over the last decade. Foreign workers for "cheap" is a big problem, low moral from shitty treatment by administrations (happened long before Trump so don't bother with the dumbass blame game), corrupt administrators, and of course shit morals at companies executive levels.
Of course it "could" be a foreign agency, but lets be real. If the other agencies were doing their jobs it would have been caught long before public attention on it.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
United States of America
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
How dare you criticize Israel! You are not even Jewish!
gdewilde@gmail.com
Now "we're" totally fucked. Everyone panic!
Posted like a true Anonymous Coward.
Who cares how much it costs; Mexico is gonna pay for it, remember?!
Oh, wait....
There is literally no way you can communicate with another person where you can be assured that your communication is not monitored. Even face-to-face communication in code is compromised, if the other party is compromised. Cell phones only work by collecting a lot of data about the caller and the caller's recipient. If CBS is only now figuring out that D.C. is a hotbed of cell data leakage, they are fantastically bad at their jobs.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
I've said it many times, and you can check my history, that if the average American knew how much their cell phone leaked data, they would not only refuse to own one, but refuse to allow them on their property.
This seems to be a common fallacy among computer nerds, that people don't take steps to protect their privacy out of ignorance. Unfortunately, many studies have now shown that people simply don't care. If you ask them, they would prefer to keep private things private. But the value they place on that privacy is really small, to the point that they would give up such info willingly, with full explanation of what they are giving up and that it will be used by others for something (much stricter than the real world where it is more of a risk of being used), for very small tokens of return.
It's people playing Pokemon Go
It's not like America's Commander In Chief would be stupid enough to refuse a secure cell phone just so he can continue his 3am Twitter on the shitter regimen.
Oh god. We're all doomed.
File this under, "no shit, Sherlock". I mean, has anyone gotten a load of the White House staff lately? We had a registered agent of a foreign government receiving national security briefings and holding the post of National Security Advisor before he was thrown to the wolves for being too obvious.
The president just signed a license deal to use his name on a string of Chinese brothels. I mean, what the fuck? I miss the days when the worst thing a president did was get a blowjob from a 20 year old and lie about it.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/07...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Except there's really been no word on improving the vetting, and no actual behavior by the white house that would indicate any real desire to fulfill an urgent security need, just the normal behavior you'd expect from a white house trying to make headlines for political gain -- up to and including delaying action so as not to step on news coverage of Trump's congressional address.
And no intelligence agency asked for the ban, and when the white house tried to get them to say good things about it, they pretty much called it ineffective and counterproductive.
So the travel ban is pretty clearly a fraud, just political red meat for the easily deceived.
Also, the countries most likely to tap wireless services aren't subject to the ban, nor are they especially Muslim.
Someone had to do it.
Stop wasting aluminum foil on hats, please. It takes a lot of energy to produce.
Someone had to do it.
It'll be built by Mexican contractors whom Trump will stiff when it comes time to pay them.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Trump is in a position where he needs to prove his wiretapping claim--and fast.
Why? His campaign was built on lies which people willingly believed. I don't see how adding one more to the pile makes the slightest bit of difference.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
We all know Obama is doing this. Just waiting for Trump to figure this out, and regurgitate it back out to Twitter to feed his babies.
Yep, let's keep America safe....like selling guns to everyone and anyone. They killed roughly 33,000 Americans per year. Now them thar terrorists, you must be a real loser to get killed by one of them terrorists. Stand yer ground, kill that neighborhood teenager who trespasses on your sacred ground.
Trump doesn't feel the need to prove his wiretapping claims. He's already trotted out his alibi, it was those naughty people at Fox, shame on them for reporting something that would be picked up and amplified by Trump and his poodles.
Actually, Trump doesn't feel the need to prove anything. His entire life is a lie, it's all he knows. By now, his staff is realizing he's been lying to them as well, it is who he is.
Wow!! And you say you've told us this before? I'm impressed.
It must be horrible to be a foreign spy these days. Risking your life, working with the latest technology that only the brights engineers understand, only to spy on Trumps communication. And then again risking your life while using the latest technology to try to communicate the stolen information back to the mother country only to hear "We already knew that, we read it on Twitter this morning".
because all gear is made in China that has backdoors connected to systems in China. No need to tap or intercept guvmint comms because Russia already has interactions with high level people appointed by Trump.
mfwright@batnet.com
You never once used your phone except to call for a tow truck once.
Not what I said. I said: I've used it exactly once when I could not have used a VOiP or POTS.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Ja, precis.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.