Corporate security and phones.. 

By Anonymous Coward Posted Sunday 16th September 2007 10:29 GMT

One of the main arguments why cellular transmissions can be realistically considered "safer" is because the protocol is proprietary and it thus takes considerable investment in time and money before "on air" tapping can be done.

Note: it's not actually impossible, just that it takes effort and it's generally cheaper to tap an end point of the conversation unless you're the US and can blow gazillion dollars and set up something like ECHELON (in the UK at Menwith Hill). Part of the reasons that it's possible is because of the way international calls are handled where it is theoretically possible to conduct a main-in-the-middle attack without anyone the wiser.

In case you were under the impression that new shiny 3G made things better, that's not quite the case - the attack vectors just change. 3G call handling and voice transport has been made "IP compatible" so it becomes cheaper to run the provider network, but that means that the signal runs over ordinary TCP/IP the moment it has hit the base station. And we all know there are *plenty* of tools for that.

That change initially produced a couple of little problems for the equipment providers because they were not up to speed on TCP/IP security, causing a couple of month of having to physically inject glue into an RJ45 socket on base system equipment (to ruin it) as it would have otherwise provided a jack straight into the control core (i.e. find cell kit in muddy field, break lock and have an, um, "field" day).

However, rule 1 if you want to keep anything confidential is not to have ANY mobile phone in the same room, - even when switched off they can be used. And your trusty microphone equipped laptop could be doing more than you think too - heaven knows what features Microsoft gave themselves when they updated without your permission.

Pen and paper is fine - as long as you know it's your pen and nobody has touched it.

If you don't want anyone to know where you've been you better leave that phone at home too, especially in the UK it is trivial to set up a tracker. All you need to do is to make sure you borrow the phone in question under control long enough to acknowledge the confirmation SMS - after that you have about a month before your victim will find out. Or use another phone, insert your own anonymously bought SIM, set it all up and then hide it somewhere. Gives you a couple of days before the battery runs out ..

Corporate security? It takes some thinking and the above is only about 10% of it .. Another example would be the use of cyber cafes or airport lounge systems to read corporate email.

Do. Not. Even. Think. About. It.