Re: Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran

[Benjamin Kreuter <ben.kreuter () gmail com>]

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 13:25:30 -0700
coderman <coderman () gmail com> wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 9:42 AM, Benjamin Kreuter
> <ben.kreuter () gmail com> wrote:
> > ...
> > > (CALEA taps are *widely* exploited by the bad guys.
> >
> > Do you have a good citation for this?
>
> the most infamous case is the athens affair:
>   http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-athens-affair
>
> "While this is the first major infiltration to involve cellphones, the
> scheme did not depend on the wireless nature of the network.
> Basically, the hackers broke into a telephone network and subverted
> its built-in wiretapping features for their own purposes."
>
> with the "built-in wiretapping features" being CALEA components...

It is not clear to me that these were CALEA components, as opposed to
some similar law in Greece or the UK (where Vodaphone is based).  Are
there examples of this sort of thing happening in the US, using CALEA
equipment?  Alternatively, is it clear that the Greek equipment was
built to US standard i.e. that all CALEA requirements are already met
by that equipment?

Again, I have little doubt that CALEA functionality has been abused by
criminals, I just do not know of any well-publicized cases that I can
point to.

-- Ben



-- 
Benjamin R Kreuter
UVA Computer Science
brk7bx () virginia edu
KK4FJZ

--

"If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there
will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public
opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even
if laws exist to protect them." - George Orwell

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