Mobile Phone Tapping Question

[Fluff]

Is it possible for the the mobile operators / intelligence services. To listen in through the microphone in your cell phone without you knowing about it and without you even making a call?

I would suspect that it is possible, and that they do it.

[Technoid]

If they modify your phone, then yes.
Othervise they can only listen in while you are calling someone.

[lowlifecat]

untrue

it is very possible to listen in on a cell even if it is not in the middle of a call. cell phones are always connected to their networks, in the middle of a call or not. no modifications needed.

worst offenders are nokia and sony-erickson.

only way you can stop this is if you turn off the phone and pull the battery.

[Fluff]

@llc I can well believe that SE and Nokia have this ability built in.

How would they know which cell to listen to?

1. I would assume that to identify potential suspects. They would collect logs as to which IMEI numbers were connected to which masts in which locations. Log journeys. If irregular. Flag.

2. Sim card number data would be collected from logs. As user could change SIM card quite easily. Top up locations. Place where SIM was bought from credit card usage, would be collated. To help identify sources.

3. Flag all phone IMEI /sim cards that have strange usage patterns.

That all the unused pay as you go sim cards go inactive, unless they are registered to an address, with 2 forms of ID, and used within past 6 months.
Unable to get a physical mobile phone voucher from a shop if paying cash. (else ID needed).

Reprogramming of IMEI is apparently quite easy. IMEI I think is equivalent to MAC address.

[Sasq]

Fluff, I used to work for the Oz telco, all be it years ago.
to my knowledge they didn't have the ability then, but it would be fesible to do with digital.
if that sort of function is built in these days, I really have no idea.
A cell phone is always connected yes, but only in terms of 'I am here, listening to this mast(s)'
in terms of listening to all phones all the time - not possible, too much bandwidth required.

At one point in my telco life, I used to work in the exchanges changing out old cables for new, I had to listen to see if the phone was active before we cut it. From very personal experience, I can promise you, no one listens in unless there is a very good reason to do so, mostly because after you hear what people are having for dinner (food or umm *blush*) 500,000 damn times, it gets old.

so, possible - probably yes, do it to everybody - no, if you're not doing anything wrong (in terms of national security) no one will give a rats, nor will they listen.

[az]

I don't know if it's possible: The phones should deactivate their mic while not in use, they deactivate all the processing and the transmitter only pings the network to stay in contact. So if this were possible, you'd notice because your battery would be flat after two hours. You can also put your phone next to unshielded speakers and hear when it's connecting the network.

[lowlifecat]

we got warnings about cells phones being used as bugs when i was in miltel.

here's an experiment for you, if you can find one of those old Sony (not sony-erikson) cell phones. i believe sony only made 1 cell phone before the merger with errikson *shrug*

anyway, this sony phone had a neat feature. if someone was calling you from another cell phone you could put the phone to your ear and clearly hear everything that was being said on the other side. the person calling you would only hear a ring tone.

that was ~5 years ago. technology has really advanced since then...

there used to be a lot of articles about cellphone tapping on the web. good reads if you looking for scary stuff.

edit: forgot to mention it is possible to snoop on a cell phone without there even being a SIM card installed.

[az]

What you say might be true, but in your case a speech connection was already established to the network, and the phone was in call-mode with processor, mic, speaker etc. on.

It certainly is possible to track both phones and sim-cards separately as long as a phone is in standby.

[gt40]

what technoid said.

[Technoid]

Okay, just to clarify:
Some years ago some paranoid nutcase made SÄPO (Swedish Security police, a bunch of paranoid morons that shouldent do anything else than provide bodygaurds, since their bodygaurds are efficient, when assigned but thats another rant) belive in the same things as lowlifecat and they started to go out and "warn" people they thought should be warned.

That made the shit hit the fan, since bugging in sweden is highly illegal, and anyone manufacturing and selling that kind of equipment without a ton of licences is in deeeeeep shit (and yes a mobile phone with those capabilities sold to the public is a big no no)
So acordingly the then Ericcson mobiles whent through the roof and demanded that SÄPO would prove it
SÄPO couldent, and had to go out with a verry public and rather embarasing excuse for causing panic.

[Technoid]

we got warnings about cells phones being used as bugs when i was in miltel.

Yeah, SÄPO probably got them from the same source, it got them into trubble

here's an experiment for you, if you can find one of those old Sony (not sony-erikson) cell phones. i believe sony only made 1 cell phone before the merger with errikson *shrug*

anyway, this sony phone had a neat feature. if someone was calling you from another cell phone you could put the phone to your ear and clearly hear everything that was being said on the other side. the person calling you would only hear a ring tone.

Urban myth warning the above scores high on the urban myth scale.
Both the phones and the MTSO would have to have serius glitches in their systems to allow this...

that was ~5 years ago. technology has really advanced since then...

there used to be a lot of articles about cellphone tapping on the web. good reads if you looking for scary stuff.

edit: forgot to mention it is possible to snoop on a cell phone without there even being a SIM card installed.

Really?

[Nowhere]

...
Urban myth warning the above scores high on the urban myth scale.
Both the phones and the MTSO would have to have serius glitches in their systems to allow this...
...

What's an MTSO? And anyway...wouldn't a mobile that "doesn't behave" be enough?

[Sasq]

not really, the dial tone you hear is generated by your phone, not the connecting system.
*some systems may vary

[Nowhere]

Hmmm, here it's apparently (speaking only from experience/what I hear when I call people from different networks) generated by the network of phone to which you're calling. Hence the idea/question...

edit: and anyway the dialtones are standard enough to not cause suspicion in most people, I guess...

[lowlifecat]

Yeah, SÄPO probably got them from the same source, it got them into trubble

I didn't have high enough clearance to know where the information was coming from.

Urban myth warning the above scores high on the urban myth scale.
Both the phones and the MTSO would have to have serius glitches in their systems to allow this...

oh no, there is no urban myth. I've only seen 3 of those sony phones and had that particular bug shown to me on two of them. i did the presentation on the 3rd. Spiraldragon can verify (if he remembers) 'cause one of our main comp parts suppliers had one.

This was really a minor bug in the software of the phone that sony tried to pass off as a feature (how very M$ of them).

the way all cell phones work; if you call someone or someone calls you, before you click 'accept' or 'decline' the connection is already created between the phones and data is being transfered.

everything else: Dailtone, phone ringing, screen lighting up is after the fact 'value-added'. done by software/firmware on either phone.

if you browse through the internet on some 'spy' websites you will find a couple of 'modified' cell phones for sale. These guys have an extra controller chip added to them. What the chip does is when the phone recieves a call from a certain party it will let the phone establish the connection but will not ring the phone, light up the screen or show any other signs that the phone is active.

the person making the call won't even hear a dailtone, he just dails and within a few seconds has a full connection to bugged phone and is able to listen to what's going into the microphone.

the chip doesn't add anything to the cellphone, the potential is already there in hardware. it just modifies the behaviour of the cell's software/firmware.

The website i saw only showed 2 phones but the technology is easily transfered to other phones by either adding the control chip or by modifying it's software. weither this can be done without a chip or software modding depends on your "conspiracy theories"

Smart phones (and smartish phones) are really in trouble here. Most of them do not have a 'firmware' for phones but run a "phone emulator" in software. This is not a myth as i have (to my chagrin) deleted the 'phone software' from my BB (with interesting results).

modifying phone software has gotten easier (not more difficult) in recent years.

Snarfing has progressed to a point where you can modify phone code by uploading a type of trojan horse via bluetooth.

Even phones that are immune to snarfing (like the BB) aren't immune. It's possible to infect such phones with trojans via downloaded email attachements. This actually was in the news a few weeks ago and was described as an issue for all SunJava based phones.

These trojans can perform many tasks such as datamining, interception of secure and/or encrypted data and modification of the phones software. if a FPGA chip can be programmed to turn a phone into a bug what's to stop a trojan horse software doing it on another phone.

Really?

really