Mysterious and malicious cell towers? Well, that sounds like something you’d watch in a sci-fi movie or something like that. Though it seems these are real, anyhow, let me explain. CryptoPhone 500 is one of several ultra-secure devices to be released in the last few years. This device discovered seventeen mysterious cellphone towers all over America after an executive noticed that his handset is leaking data on a regular basis. These towers look like regular cell phone towers, however they’re not what they seem to be. It seems like they have a malicious purpose, at least according to Popular Science.
These towers are basically computers and allegedly wirelessly attack handsets via baseband chips which are built into today’s smartphones. They can eavesdrop your calls and even install spyware on your devices. Leo Goldsmith, CEO of ESD America, said that these towers have some functions of a normal cellphone towers but that their true purpose is completely different considering they can eavesdrop and even install malicious software on random devices. He also added normal cellphones cannot detect them and that it is unknown who created them. “What we find suspicious is that a lot of these interceptors are right on top of U.S. military bases. 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.” added Goldsmith.
ESD also added that baseband attacks are kind of hard to pull off considering chips are closely guarded, so this is an expensive technology, so they don’t think ordinary hacker could pull this off. Mr. Goldsmith also added that these devices cost less than $100,000. “a real time GSM A5.1 cell phone interceptor. It cannot be detected. It allows interception of voice and text. It also allows voice manipulation, up or down channel blocking, text intercept and modification, calling & sending text on behalf of the user, and directional finding of a user during random monitoring of calls.” this is how he described one of the models called VME Dominator.
I’m sure all of you have different theories when it comes to this, but it sure does sound creepy. I’m going to stay out of the guessing game when it comes to this, but this is really interesting and kind of worrisome. Your thoughts?
