Security researchers have just unveiled details of two covert surveillance campaigns that exploit weaknesses in the global telecom infrastructure. In a report published on Thursday, Citizen Lab explains that attackers abuse the signalling systems mobile operators use to support roaming, route messages, and locate devices on the network.
The weaknesses were used to track certain subscribers or to send invisible SMS messages that retrieved the target’s location. The findings point to a wider problem in the global mobile ecosystem, where the connections between operators can be abused. Crucially, users can do little on their end to protect themselves from these attacks; even those using the best VPN service are, in fact, vulnerable to this type of surveillance.
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Source: TechRadar News
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