[gariac]

The "stingray" has been making news again. If you haven't been following cell tower spoofing, the "stingray" is a commercial device that illegally spoofs a cell tower, but has become a generic term for any device spoofing a tower, i.e. hacker.

The key to the bad guy hacking your phone is that the tower determines the level of encryption, not the handset.. In the US, we use A5/3. In oppressive countries that think their population doesn't deserve privacy, they use A5/0, or basically no encryption.

If you know how to get your Blackberry in engineering screen mode, you can view your present level of encryption by
utilities->ciphering .
It indeed shows I have A5/3.

Questions:
1) Is there a warning on the phone if encryption falls to A5/0 or I suppose anything lower than A5/3?
2) Is there an app or some way within the OS that will indicate the current level of encryption.

This is useful background information.
http://blog.taddong.com/2011/02/does...s-not.html?m=1

The article claims the ability to see the encryption level depends also on the simcard. Now I suppose if you were in India, where you only get A5/0, they wouldn't want to make this too obvious, so the simcard is set up to hide that information from the customer.

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[gariac]

I guess we don't have any readers in India, or they can't get their phone in engineering screen mode.

BTW, I left off the first line item to select to reach the cipher detection. This is the complete sequence.

Mobile Network Engineering Screens ->
Utilities ->
Ciphering


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[jeffh]

I can get into the BlackBerry Engineering Screens, but I can't find Ciphering. It may not be available on Verizon networks.

[gariac]

CDMA doesn't have the same security "features" as GSM, with features in quotes since I don't consider having no security a feature! Thanks for trying.

BTW, supposedly CDMA towers report their geographical coordinates. You might want to check that out on your engineering screen for yucks. I only mention that because GSM doesn't have that feature. Most apps that report GSM tower locations use a database provided by google since tower locations are not sent by the tower. This google database is horribly inaccurate.


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[jeffh]

I don't see anything in the Engineering Screens that looks like coordinates or tower location information. I thought GSM towers transmitted that info and CDMA towers did not. I don't have any experience with GSM devices.

[gariac]

It is the other way around. (CDMA yes, GSM no.)

Check out
www.cellumap.com
http://f5bbutils.fairview5.com/signalloc5/

Unfortunately Fairview no longer is working on cell tower sniffer software. Cellumap does a decent job, but it is more cloud oriented.

A bit of a warning here on Cellumap. It puts all the phone information on its map. Because there aren't a lot of users of Cellumap, your phone looks unique. That is, you might be the only person using a Blackberry type X with OS Y. You still can't be identified UNLESS you run cellumap at your house. ;-) So beware when you hit the "send data" button. You wouldn't want to upload a hit at your house and then at some irreputable place like a bordello or Apple store.

The "signal locator" from Fairview is useful because you can store the tower information on your mediacard. I used it in a area where I was roaming. I found a much stronger GSM service and logged the data on my phone. When I had the chance, I called T-mobile and gave them specific data on the tower. The next time I was there, I found T-Mobile added the company as a roaming partner.


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[wu-wei]

I'm on a GSM device and I'm showing A5/3 enabled. I don't know of any way (off hand) to set an alert for when it is disabled.

I am also a fan of Fairview's utilities, but development has apparently stopped, and their latest version doesn't play well with my current OS.

[gariac]

You didn't state your country, but I assume the vast majority of us will be on A5/3. But if someone finds different encryption, please let us know what and where.

Also if there is a BB10 developer reading this, perhaps they can indicate if the API allows the cipher to be detected. That is an app I would pay for, especially if it detected a sudden change. Or maybe RIM should incorporate a feature to warn of A5/0. One of the reasons I use a Blackberry is not to get hacked.



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[iamq]

You might find the phone displays a padlock, or a small warning on the home screen when it falls back to a lower cipher. I don't have any access to a test network at the moment to try it on the BB

I have very very old GSM phones which give me a unlocked padlock icon on my old test network - that was default, no special firmware or anything. I believe its part of the spec to tell a user when the default (higher cipher) is not being used and if there is any crypto in use or the call is fully clear.

[tomdooley]

I'm from India, just checked, it's A5/3.

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[gariac]

Thanks for the India report. So much for what I read on the interwebs regarding A5/0 being used there..



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