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This became the foundation of the Crocodile Hunter project.Ī rare public photo of a stingray, manufactured by Harris Corp. Quintin and fellow researcher Yomna Nasser, who authored the EFF’s technical paper on how cell site simulators work, found that collecting and decoding the MIB and SIB messages over the air can identify potentially illegitimate cell towers. “This is where the heart of all of the vulnerabilities lie in 4G,” said Cooper Quintin, a senior staff technologist at the EFF, who headed the research. These messages, known as the master information block (MIB) and the system information block (SIB), are broadcast by the cell tower to help the phone connect to the network.
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It does this by exchanging a series of unencrypted messages with the cell tower, including unique details about the user’s phone - such as its IMSI number and its approximate location.
Some phone apps claim they can detect stingrays and other cell site simulators, but most produce wrong results.īut now researchers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation have discovered a new technique that can detect Hailstorm devices.Įnter the EFF’s latest project, dubbed “Crocodile Hunter” - named after Australian nature conservationist Steve Irwin who was killed by a stingray’s barb in 2006 - helps detect cell site simulators and decodes nearby 4G signals to determine if a cell tower is legitimate or not.Įvery time your phone connects to the 4G network, it runs through a checklist - known as a handshake - to make sure that the phone is allowed to connect to the network. Newer cell site simulators, called “Hailstorm” devices, take advantage of similar flaws in 4G that let police snoop on newer phones and devices. Most of those flaws are fixed in the newer, faster and more secure 4G networks, though not all.