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California Police Used Stingrays in Planes to Spy on Phones

wired.com

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Re: California Police Used Stingrays in Planes to Spy on Phones

#3

Post by wyldfire »

We've been hearing about Stingrays so much I wondered what the average Joe can do to avoid 'em.

This is about the only thing I found, but it's promising for the long term -- http://secupwn.github.io/Android-IMSI-Catcher-Detector/ -- note that they list themselves as still in alpha and to expect false indications.

I think the typical advice I've heard -- turning off your phone or turning off the baseband functionality is pretty impractical for most folks.

Re: California Police Used Stingrays in Planes to Spy on Phones

#7

Post by josu »

"The Anaheim Police Department has acknowledged in new documents that it uses surveillance devices known as Dirtboxes—plane-mounted stingrays—on aircraft flying above the Southern California city that is home to Disneyland, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world."

According to the United States Census Bureau Anaheim County has a population of 346,997 (2014). Not being from the US, the fact that a county police from an area with a population of 350k is able to afford to buy and operate airplanes amazes me.

Re: California Police Used Stingrays in Planes to Spy on Phones

#8

Post by nier »

Here’s what a stingray is in this context:

”Stingrays and Dirtboxes are mobile surveillance systems that impersonate a legitimate cell phone tower in order to trick mobile phones and other mobile devices in their vicinity into connecting to them and revealing their unique ID and location.“

Re: California Police Used Stingrays in Planes to Spy on Phones

#9

Post by jakeogh »

wyldfire wrote: post #3

We've been hearing about Stingrays so much I wondered what the average Joe can do to avoid 'em. This is about the only thing I found, but it's promising for the long term -- http://secupwn.github.io/Android-IMSI-Catcher-Detector/ -- note that they list themselves as still in alpha and to expect false indications. I think the typical advice I've heard -- turning off your phone or turning off the baseband functionality…

Somewhere on my todo is "wire pager to cell phone", I think this would work by having a Asterisk system take the incoming call, send the (nationwide) page, pager is wired to phone, phone displays page as if it's an incoming call (while caller hears ringing), if callee decides to answer the GSM circuits get power and the phone calls the Asterisk box which patches the two together. If someone beats me to it, I'll buy one. Putting a RTL-SDR into the phone would take care of the pager circuit and make other neat things possible.
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