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O2 VoLTE: locating any customer with a phone call

mastdatabase.co.uk

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Re: O2 VoLTE: locating any customer with a phone call

#51

Post by anonymousiam »

celsoazevedo wrote: post #45
anonymousiam wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience with the US IC, they "encourage" industry to "leak" data to their advantage. This example stinks of exactly the same tactic.

Could be, but considering that you have some police/government departments/public entities using this provider, it wouldn't be wise to leak their own data to everyone in the open like this. On a side note, it's not the first time I've read a comment like the one you left above here on HN. As someone that lives in the UK, there seems to be a disconnection between what you guys write and what I see and experience daily…

The strategy is a bit more complex than you assume. The "accidental" leak of information in this case will now be "fixed" because a researcher discovered and disclosed it. Plausible deniability is maintained. It's unlikely that any "bad actors" were tracking police/government entities with this exploit, because if they had been, their own communications would have revealed their activity to the surveillance state, and they would have been subject to raid and arrest.

What you see and experience daily is probably not much different than your average citizen of the P.R.C. They're also happy to go about their daily lives living in a surveillance state, with lower crime rates than yours, and similar unchecked governmental powers.

Re: O2 VoLTE: locating any customer with a phone call

#52

Post by anonymousiam »

lostlogin wrote: post #28
anonymousiam wrote: post #22

[flagged]

> I hope that Nigel Farage will improve things when he becomes PM He is likely to improve things the same way Trump improves things. They have a lot of common ground.

I modded up your comment, because it's insightful, and doesn't reveal your opinion of either Trump or Farage. People who hate them both will agree with you as well as those who love them.

Re: O2 VoLTE: locating any customer with a phone call

#53

Post by jaoane »

porridgeraisin wrote: post #50
Mr_Minderbinder wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have spotted another error: > is within LAC 0x1003 (decimal: 4009) It should be decimal 4099.

How did you spot that?

When you’ve been working with computers for long enough, the powers of 2 live in your head… and there’s no way 0x1000 is less than 4096 :)

Re: O2 VoLTE: locating any customer with a phone call

#54

Post by Mr_Minderbinder »

porridgeraisin wrote: post #50
Mr_Minderbinder wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have spotted another error: > is within LAC 0x1003 (decimal: 4009) It should be decimal 4099.

How did you spot that?

I did the conversion in my head as I was reading.

Re: O2 VoLTE: locating any customer with a phone call

#55

Post by briansm »

cloudref wrote: post #18

Could you mitigate this by turning off VoLTE? I can see docs online for turning it off on an iPhone 11 - but my iPhone 15 doesn't have that option!

One annoyance with O2 UK is that they don't support VoLTE for legacy pay-as-you-go customers, only pay-monthly. Now I'm actually kind-of glad for that.

Re: O2 VoLTE: locating any customer with a phone call

#56

Post by badgersnake »

celsoazevedo wrote: post #7

Seems to be a serious problem. It's not that hard to root a phone, install NSG, and look at this info. O2 is also the largest mobile network in the UK and they have contracts with the government... It's disappointing that they didn't reply, but I'm not surprised. O2 seems to be a mess internally. Anything that can't be fixed by someone at a store takes ages to fix (eg: a bad number port). Their systems seem to be out…

I’m starting to think the reason they don’t charge for EU roaming is because they don’t have a system to do it.

Re: O2 VoLTE: locating any customer with a phone call

#57

Post by mrjeeves »

Mr_Minderbinder wrote: post #47
mrjeeves wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one is actually on us. The email contacted was actually @virginmediao2.co.uk, not @virginmedia.co.uk. It's a typo in the article. I'll update it with a correction.

I have spotted another error: > is within LAC 0x1003 (decimal: 4009) It should be decimal 4099.

Oops. Thanks.

Re: O2 VoLTE: locating any customer with a phone call

#58

Post by mrjeeves »

briansm wrote: post #55
cloudref wrote: post #18

Could you mitigate this by turning off VoLTE? I can see docs online for turning it off on an iPhone 11 - but my iPhone 15 doesn't have that option!

One annoyance with O2 UK is that they don't support VoLTE for legacy pay-as-you-go customers, only pay-monthly. Now I'm actually kind-of glad for that.

Coming second half of this year!

Re: O2 VoLTE: locating any customer with a phone call

#60

Post by Aeyxen »

The wild part: this isn’t a theoretical bug. It’s implementation laziness that other UK networks already solved, as the post notes. ECI leaks have been called out since LTE rolled out—see papers like https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.05007—and automated location mapping is trivial given open mast DBs.
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