<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;">I find all this more than slightly amusing. <div>Much of what’s been reported is available by eavesdropping on the</div><div>control channels. That would get all the identifying information for all</div><div>the handsets in range without doing anything active. Add a hand-held</div><div>directional antenna (lotsa gain in a small stick at these frequencies) </div><div>and you’re fox-hunting.</div><div><br></div><div>The primary reason a device would emit “covert” signals</div><div>is to re-home the handsets to the box. I would expect it to do that with a “forced handoff”</div><div>so the handsets re-home with a QSY to a different channel so the box could</div><div>do a man-in-the-middle and retransmit on the original channel so the sessions</div><div>wouldn’t drop. then the box could use the standard control functions to interrogate</div><div>a great many things in the phone, not least of which is its location (probably GPS-based).</div><div><br></div><div>On a completely different, utterly unrelated topic….</div><div><br></div><div>For quite some time now, a completely open-source SDR cellular base station design</div><div>has been readily available. It uses GNU-Radio and the original hardware platform</div><div>was the TAPR HSDR(sp??). I believe a much more compact and tidy hardware design</div><div>is available now, esp. since the semiconductor biz has been busily making this easier</div><div>and easier to do by responding to the cellular system companies and making better</div><div>chips with more and more of the parts in tiny little boxes.</div><div><br></div><div>The software with all the protocols and control sit atop GNU-Radio and it all works.</div><div>For several years now, BURNING MAN has had site-local cellular service provided</div><div>by this system. The first few years you could only talk to other handsets at the site</div><div>because there was no backhaul out to the PSTN. Lately, however, they’ve gotten</div><div>backhaul from one of the Hoop-n-Holler FonKoz. (I believe it was a radio shot -</div><div>probably point-to-point WiF.)</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>AS for how these two stories might be related somehow, I have *no* earthly idea.</div><div><br></div><div>Far be it from me to suggest people are straining at gnats and passing elephants.</div><div>Or that what they don’t know would amuse and/or scare them mightily.</div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>-mo</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On Mar 5, 2015, at 1:16 PM, Richard Barth <<a href="mailto:w3hwn@comcast.net">w3hwn@comcast.net</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/meet-the-machines-that-steal-your-phones-data/" eudora="autourl" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/meet-the-machines-that-steal-your-phones-data/</a></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>