Authorities in Canada have disclosed details of a mobile cyber operation that relied on SMS blasters mounted inside vehicles moving through urban areas.
Three suspects drove around downtown Toronto with these hidden devices running in their cars, impersonating cell towers. The Toronto Police Service confirmed that this marked the first operation of its kind ever recorded in the country, with the campaign causing 13 million network disruptions in total. Investigators say the devices mimicked legitimate cellular base stations, forcing nearby phones to connect automatically due to stronger signal proximity.
Read more…
Source : TechRadar News
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Telco sector’s new cyber regulation
August 17, 2017
The Federal Government has got new legislation through the Senate that will compel telcos to notify authorities when they make changes to their networks after a range of amendments were made that increase dialogue and decrease government over-reach. The Telecommunications Sector Security Reforms (TSSR) Bill passed through the Senate earlier this week and has been generally accepted ...
- Many Factors Conspire in ICS/SCADA Attacks
August 11, 2017
Critical infrastructure operators can’t be blamed for a perpetual case of whiplash. They are mired between hackers targeting internet-facing and air-gapped systems with equal precision, and vendors and management unwilling to properly tackle security for fear of downtime and incompatibility. “The space of ICS/SCADA has not changed much, so you can find devices running old OSes ...
- TalkTalk fined £100k for exposing personal sensitive info
August 10, 2017
Blighty’s Information Commissioner’s Office has whacked TalkTalk with a £100,000 fine after the data of the records of 21,000 people were exposed to fraudsters in an Indian call centre. The breach came to light in September 2014 when TalkTalk started getting complaints from customers that they were receiving scam calls. Typically, the scammers pretended they were ...
- Satellite Phone Encryption Calls Can be Cracked in Fractions of a Second
July 10, 2017
Security researchers have discovered a new method to decrypt satellite phone communications encrypted with the GMR-2 cipher in “real time” — that too in mere fractions of a second in some cases. The new attack method has been discovered by two Chinese security researchers and is based on previous research by German academicians in 2012, showing ...
- Virgin Media tells 800,000 users to change passwords over hub hacking risk
June 23, 2017
Virgin Media is advising more than 800,000 customers with a specific router to change their password immediately after an investigation found hackers could gain access to it. Virgin Media said the risk to customers with a Super Hub 2 router was small, but advised them to change both their network and router passwords if they were ...
- Brit hacker admits he siphoned info from US military satellite network
June 16, 2017
A UK-based computer hacker has admitted stealing hundreds of usernames and email addresses from a US military communications system. Sean Caffrey, 25, of Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands, broke in and pinched the ranks, usernames and email addresses of more than 800 users of a satellite communications system and of about 30,000 satellite phones, back ...