Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone
theintercept.com
Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone
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Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone
#2TL;DR it's a radio in your pocket that constantly announces its identity. I'm quite interested in the fact that people don't realize this. Is it a generational split between people who can remember when we did not all have radios in our pockets and those who can't, or ??? The fact that an always-on radio you carry everywhere can be used to track you seems like the #1 most obvious thing about the technology.
Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone
#3TL;DR it's a radio in your pocket that constantly announces its identity. I'm quite interested in the fact that people don't realize this. Is it a generational split between people who can remember when we did not all have radios in our pockets and those who can't, or ??? The fact that an always-on radio you carry everywhere can be used to track you seems like the #1 most obvious thing about the technology.
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Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone
#4TL;DR it's a radio in your pocket that constantly announces its identity. I'm quite interested in the fact that people don't realize this. Is it a generational split between people who can remember when we did not all have radios in our pockets and those who can't, or ??? The fact that an always-on radio you carry everywhere can be used to track you seems like the #1 most obvious thing about the technology.
You can't expect end users with little-to-no technical know-how to have the same common knowledge that you do.
Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone
#5TL;DR it's a radio in your pocket that constantly announces its identity. I'm quite interested in the fact that people don't realize this. Is it a generational split between people who can remember when we did not all have radios in our pockets and those who can't, or ??? The fact that an always-on radio you carry everywhere can be used to track you seems like the #1 most obvious thing about the technology.
You can't expect end users with little-to-no technical know-how to have the same common knowledge that you do.
I watched a doco last night where researchers put a sounding beacon inside a shark.
Inside it! They said something like "these sharks are used to cuts and scrapes and heal quickly."
It's no wonder people don't immediately associate their phone with a locating beacon.
Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone
#6Anyone who cared (for either personal or professional reasons) has been leaving their phone at home for probably close to a decade now.
Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone
#7Reports of stingray flight patterns go back to at least 2015:
https://komonews.com/archive/fbi-behind-mysterious-spy-aircr...
https://bgr.com/2015/06/03/fbi-dirtbox-stingray-spy-plane-pr...
Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone
#8Do they even need to bother with a Stingray, can't they basically just pull up whatever provider's law enforcement portal and click a few buttons?
Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone
#9Do they even need to bother with a Stingray, can't they basically just pull up whatever provider's law enforcement portal and click a few buttons?
Yeah, different tool though.
An active mode IMSI capture device (eg, a Stingray) can:
Extracting stored data such as International Mobile Subscriber Identity ("IMSI") numbers and Electronic Serial Number ("ESN")
Writing cellular protocol metadata to internal storage
Forcing an increase in signal transmission power
Forcing an abundance of radio signals to be transmitted
Forcing a downgrade to an older and less secure communications protocol if the older protocol is allowed by the target device, by making the Stingray pretend to be unable to communicate on an up-to-date protocol
Interception of communications data or metadata
Using received signal strength indicators to direction find the cellular device[9] Conducting a denial of service attack
Oop, near forgot the reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_and_further_educatio...
Radio jamming for either general denial of service purposes or to aid in active mode protocol rollback attacks
Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone
#10TL;DR it's a radio in your pocket that constantly announces its identity. I'm quite interested in the fact that people don't realize this. Is it a generational split between people who can remember when we did not all have radios in our pockets and those who can't, or ??? The fact that an always-on radio you carry everywhere can be used to track you seems like the #1 most obvious thing about the technology.
You can't expect end users with little-to-no technical know-how to have the same common knowledge that you do.
Well, why not? How can we improve general technological literacy? I don't want people to memorize the protocols, but I do want them to have the foundation of knowledge that would allow them to conclude that if the phone company can connect calls to your mobile handset, then they can also figure out roughly where it is. I'd also like for people to have the basic knowledge required to understand that GPS does not track you. It's the other way around. I'd like everyone to understand that mass and energy are conserved, the Earth orbits the Sun, etc.