How a Hacker Intercepted FBI and Secret Service Calls With Google Maps

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://valleywag.gawker.com/how-a-hacker-intercepted-fbi-and-secret-service-calls-w-1531334747/

By Nitasha Tiku
ValleyWag
February 27, 2014

Earlier this week, Bryan Seely, a network engineer and one-time Marine, 
played me recordings of two phone calls (embedded below.) The calls were 
placed by unwitting citizens to the FBI office in San Francisco and to the 
Secret Service in Washington, D.C. Neither the callers nor the FBI or 
Secret Service personnel who answered the phone realized that Seely was 
secretly recording them. He used Google Maps to do it.

Yesterday, Gizmodo reported on how easy it was for Seely to spam Google 
Maps with fake listings. Seely has revealed to Valleywag a more troubling 
way to exploit the Google's laissez-faire attitude toward 
verification—loopholes the international search megalith has known about 
for at least four years.

The callers that Seely recorded thought they were speaking directly to the 
government agencies because they looked up the telephone number on Google 
Maps. What they didn't know was that Seely had set up fake listings for 
the San Francisco FBI office and Secret Service in Washington, D.C., 
displaying numbers that went to a phone account he set up rather than the 
federal offices. After Seely's numbers received the calls, they were 
seamlessly forwarded to the real offices the callers were trying to reach, 
only now the audio of their conversations with real federal agents was 
being captured by Seely.

Seely told Valleywag:

[...]

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