C5IS reviews Wintego CatchApp, a solution that leverages a little-known vulnerability in WhatsApp's Signal protocol implementation. Wintego created an uproar in late 2016 when it was revealed that a product brochure made the claim that Wintego’s CatchApp solution offers the “unprecedented capability” to crack end-to-end encryption (E2EE) used by the popular messaging … [Read more...]
Inside China’s IMSI Catcher Boom
LongHope, Etross, Semptian, Foshan Amplitec, HK Medsourcing - the list of China’s IMSI catcher manufacturers goes on and on. Some are produced for foreign ISS vendors that stamp them with their own logo. Some are sold via the black market to sanctioned nations to circumvent user certificate requirements, when needed. But overall this a wide open bazaar for many classes of IMSI … [Read more...]
CyberSeal Double Play: IMSI Catchers and Detectors
In industry panels on mobile interception, it’s not often that the name CyberSeal surfaces. As a subsidiary of Israel’s Magal S3, CyberSeal is but one component of Magal’s broad portfolio of physical and cybersecurity solutions sold to governments and critical infrastructure enterprises. But tucked away inside its giant parent company, CyberSeal is a hidden gem of special … [Read more...]
Penetrating the Hype Over 5G IoT Hacking – and 5G Itself
The audience looked puzzled when Telecom Italia (TI) CTO Giovanni Ferigo veered from his talk on 5G progress into a revelation on his "personal nightmare" - 5G IoT hacking. Press and show came to Mobile World Congress to hear market leaders TI beat the drum the greatest innovation yet in mobility. They were geared up for marketing hooplah. Ferigo delivered on that count, to be … [Read more...]
Mobile Hacking: SS7, SIGTRAN, Diameter Protocols Put Networks at Risk
A "new" U.S. government report finds that SS7, SIGTRAN, Diameter and other protocols put mobile and IP networks at risk to cyber attacks. Why didn't they notice the problem when first revealed in 2008? Call it the Revenge of the CLECs. When the communications industry underwent massive deregulation two decades past - e.g., in the U.S. Telecom Act of 1996 and similar laws in … [Read more...]