Fake Cellphone Towers Are Intercepting Calls All Over the US

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Now would be a good time to don your tin-foil hats again, thanks to a new report from Popular Science this week. Seventeen fake cell towers were discovered all across the United States and probably more will be discovered in the future. The owners of the fake cell towers are unknown at this point, but their purpose is definitely mobile phone surveillance and someone is up to no good. Thanks to forum member JaiWebb for the heads up. :cool:

Although it is unclear who owns the towers, ESD found that several of them were located near US military bases.
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John C. Dvorak, on the NoAgendaShow earlier this year, told a story of Obama visiting San Francisco near where Dvorak's son was working. While Obama was nearby, Dvorak's son and co-workers discovered that all their cell phone batteries were draining faster than normal. Curry and Dvorak hypothesize that whomever was with Obama was intercepting/probing all the cell phones from the area.

Now there are stories that the NSA, police and other Government agencies might be using..

fake towers, known as “interceptors,” were discovered in July by users of the CryptoPhone500, one of the ultra-secure cell phones released after Edward Snowden’s leaks about NSA snooping. The phone is essentially a Samsung Galaxy S3 customized with high-level encryption that costs around $3,500. While driving around the country, CryptoPhone users plotted on a map every time they connected to a nameless tower (standard towers run by wireless service providers like Verizon usually have names) and received an alert that the device had turned off their phone’s encryption (allowing their messages to be read).. the VME Dominator can capture calls and texts, and can even control the intercepted phone.. This NSA-style surveillance is spreading to local cops. A growing number of police departments are using tower-mimicking devices, “stingrays,” to track a cell phone’s location and extract call logs.
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MrCrispy said:
Nonsense. Why blame other countries when our own govt is most likely to be the culprit and has in fact admitted to this.
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Because our government doesn't require the use of extra towers to listen to your phone calls if they so choose. The NSA has a presence in pretty much every telecom in the US.
 
MrCrispy said:
Nonsense. Why blame other countries when our own govt is most likely to be the culprit and has in fact admitted to this.
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Because these days you could basically call our government a foreign government. It certainly doesn't have our interests in mind.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Because these days you could basically call our government a foreign government. It certainly doesn't have our interests in mind.
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There is so much foreign money in Washington that never gets mentioned, its not a stretch it run by existing foreign government.
 
So with the knowledge of these towers, would it be considered an act of terrorism for the American people to go and pull these towers down without any consent?
 
Cerulean said:
So with the knowledge of these towers, would it be considered an act of terrorism for the American people to go and pull these towers down without any consent?
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It doesn't have to be a tower. Remember about 5-6 years ago where people showed off at black hat ways to hack GSM phones for roughly $1000? It's the same concept. If all you are concerned about is where everyone is in say a quarter mile radius you could do it with a handheld device. If you want to intercept calls, just rent out a office space in a building and route calls through VoIP.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/meet-the-machines-that-steal-your-phones-data/2/
 
It anyone bothers to read the Popsci article (not the Business insider article that links Popsci ) you will see that they are talking about someone with a computer hooked up to some radio equipment. A virtual tower not a real 120 foot tall steel tower.

The company that makes the "Fake tower detector" even issued a clarification last week saying that the towers are not real towers they are virtual towers.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...earing-about-arent-necessarily-towers-at-all/
 
There's too much BS going on in the digital age. I just want to transport myself to Pleasantville, assuming there's vidyas, movie theaters, and Panera Bread.
 
I would have never noticed that my phone was connecting to one of these fake cell towers if it wasn't for the Waze app. It started complaining there was no network connection but the notification bar was showing 2G. (wtf?)
 
I'm surprised lcpiper hasn't shown up yet to inform us ignorant forum users about how this is protecting everyone.
 
amddragonpc said:
I would have never noticed that my phone was connecting to one of these fake cell towers if it wasn't for the Waze app. It started complaining there was no network connection but the notification bar was showing 2G. (wtf?)
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2g will do that you know. If you're on such a crap connection internet connected apps run lie shit.
 
MrCrispy said:
Nonsense. Why blame other countries when our own govt is most likely to be the culprit and has in fact admitted to this.
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Actually, you are right, but the actual author is more likely more right when he said the Military.

Look guys, the Military has Stingrays and uses them in hostile environments like Iraq, Afghanistan, South Africa, etc. as part of their SIGINT work. that means they also have to train with them here back home so they know how to do their jobs overseas.

Now you guys are aware that there is a legal difference between what the SIGINT community can do and what they can't. For instance they can intercept your signals but they can not do analysis on what they have intercepted, etc. But they can practice setting up and operating their equipment as long as they don't actually do anything with the data they intercept. In short, they will turn it on, listen into phone calls, etc, and dump the stuff when they are done. They won't do through the motions of finding out who owns the phone etc because that would fall into the realm of analysis and be illegal.

Now when these soldiers are training they are not up all the time but even a few hours once a week would be alot of training time because the truth is most soldiers only get a few hours a weak to actual practice their skills. The rest of the time they are doing so many other things it's ridiculous. So if these "fake/rouge towers" are up all the time then it's also possible that they are part of a counter-surveillance network and that is a possibility. There have been many many instances of possible enemies spying on our bases and military units and our less well funded enemies often resort to lower tech communications and have poorer operational security.

So that's what is most likely, as the man said, the Government, more specifically the Military.
 
Most people have issues getting their carriers to put up real towers and yet here is somebody putting up fake ones to give service.
 
striker444 said:
Wasn't something like this used to catch Kevin Mitnick?
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No, it was more looking for cellular data (which was rare at the time) that dialed specific numbers. The movie made it look a lot more technical than it was.
 
If you can pick up a signal from the tower then you can triangulate it's position.
 
Exavior said:
Most people have issues getting their carriers to put up real towers and yet here is somebody putting up fake ones to give service.
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Didn't someone already explain, they are not actually towers, they are devices that are able to fool the phones into connecting to them instead of the towers, ie... "fake towers"
 
Disposed said:
They wish they could...
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You know nothing if you think they don't.

I worked Army SIGINT for 16 years, I know it. A radio doesn't fart in this world without the NSA being able to collect it. They may never get around to listen to what they captured, but they got it.
 
lcpiper said:
You know nothing if you think they don't.

I worked Army SIGINT for 16 years, I know it. A radio doesn't fart in this world without the NSA being able to collect it. They may never get around to listen to what they captured, but they got it.
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That is physically impossible abd it's you that knows nothing... Most radio communication in this country has such a small range the nsa would literally need devices covering every square mile across the whole country.
 
Disposed said:
That is physically impossible abd it's you that knows nothing... Most radio communication in this country has such a small range the nsa would literally need devices covering every square mile across the whole country.
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Helloooww, MaccFlllyyyy, Satellites :rolleyes:

You want to know, or get a barest glimmer of what's possible?

Go look up the stats on SINCGARS radios, the ones the Army uses, they're Frequency Hopping radios. Just see if you can find a pub online that says how fast they change frequencies. Then start thinking to yourself, if you don't have a "key" to know what frequencies the radios are jumping to, then how could you ever intercept one? When you figure that out, then you'll understand just what we are capable of.
 
The new radio with its frequency range and 25 KHz spacing has 2320 separate frequencies that it can use.
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The radio hops, or tunes to a different frequency at a rate of over 100 times a second. If the radio is using a large number of frequencies which are spread out over its entire available spectrum, the radio is almost impossible to detect, locate, jam, or intercept.
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Unless ...........?
 
lcpiper said:
Unless ...........?
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You have a receiver that simultaneously receives all channels at once and a signal processor that can re-assemble the signal and isolate the real waveform from any deliberate interference as well as background noise.

Did I pass, professor? :p
 
Yes Phoenix you most certainly did.

All you have to do is grab it all and separate the pieces. Then reassemble the pieces based on other parameters like location and signal strength.

But to do this means you must be able to collect the entire RF Spectrum or at least that RF spectrum being used by your target.
 
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