Seventeen ordinary-looking cellphone towers allegedly have a much more malicious purpose than it appears-these mysterious towers found across America can only be identified by a heavily customized handset built for Android security, according to Popular Science.
The fake "towers," computers which wirelessly attack cellphones via the "baseband" chips built to allow them to communicate with their networks, can eavesdrop and even install spyware, ESD reported. Even though it is a known technology, the shocking revelation claims that they are actively being used.
Users of the CryptoPhone 500, one of several ultra-secure handsets that have come to market in the last couple of years, discovered the mysterious towers after an executive noticed that his handset was "leaking" data regularly.
However, "its American manufacturer boasts that the handset has a 'hardened' version of Android which removes 468 vulnerabilities from the OS," We Live Security reported. But despite the security, Les Goldsmith of the handset's U.S. manufacturer ESD found that his personal Android security handset's firewall showed signs of attack "80 to 90" times per hour due to the mysterious towers.
Even though the "fake" towers operate some similar functions of normal cellphone towers, Goldsmith described them to be "interceptors," claiming that various models can eavesdrop and even push spyware to devices.
Meanwhile, Goldsmith said it remained unclear on who created the towers or maintained them.
"Interceptor use in the U.S. is much higher than people had anticipated," Goldsmith said. "One of our customers took a road trip from Florida to North Carolina and he found eight different interceptors on that trip. We even found one at South Point Casino in Las Vegas."
"What we find suspicious is that a lot of these interceptors are right on top of U.S. military bases." Goldsmith continued. "Whose interceptor is it? Who are they, that's listening to calls around military bases? The point is: we don't really know whose they are."
Their existence can only be seen on specialized devices, such as the custom Android security OS used by Cryptophone, which includes various security features - including "baseband attack detection," according to WSD.
"Baseband attacks are considered extremely difficult - the details of the chips are closely guarded. 'Interceptors' are costly devices - and hacking baseband chips is thought to be technically advanced beyond the reach of 'ordinary' hackers, ESD said," WSD reported.
"The devices vary in form, and are sold to government agencies and others, but are computers with specialized software designed to defeat the encryption of cellphone networks. The towers target the 'Baseband' operating system of cellphones - a secondary OS which sits 'between' iOS or Android, for instance, and the cellular network."
While the devices cost "less than $100, 000," Goldsmith did not mention what level or type of device his team had detected."
