‘Fake’ Cell Phone Towers Could Be Used To Eavesdrop On Cellphones

The next time that you walk past a cell phone tower, you might be want to be a little bit more wary if you so happen to be talking on your smartphone at the same time. This is what Les Goldsmith, CEO of ESD America and developer of the CryptoPhone 500, has warned the masses about. Goldsmith mentioned that his team, having used the custom-developed CryptoPhone that offers a hardened version of Android while boasting a wide range of unique security features, managed to pick up dozens of fake cell phone ‘towers’ that are not property of any carriers, but rather, they intercepted the device’s signal.

In other words, the cell phone tower’s owner can then intercept any calls or communications within the vicinity, not to mention having the ability to push spyware to the device remotely.

To prove their point, they went on a road trip from Florida to North Carolina, where the device managed to come across 8 different interceptors. That does not sound too shocking, until one takes into consideration that baseband interceptors happen to be extremely expensive to produce and difficult to create, so that only those who are extremely committed to the cause, or is flush with cash, can produce them. There was a similar interceptor at a casino in Las Vegas, although plenty of these interceptors were discovered to do the top of military bases and government facilities.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Android