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1B Mobile Users Vulnerable to Ongoing 'SimJacker' Surveillance Attack
More than one billion mobile users are at risk from a SIM card flaw being currently exploited by threat actors, researchers warn.
A vulnerability discovered in mobile SIM cards is being actively exploited to track phone owners’ locations, intercept calls and more – all merely by sending an SMS message to victims, researchers say.
Researchers on Thursday disclosed what they said is a widespread, ongoing exploit of a SIM card-based vulnerability, dubbed “SimJacker.” The glitch has been exploited for the past two years by “a specific private company that works with governments to monitor individuals,” and impacts several mobile operators – with the potential to impact over a billion mobile phone users globally, according to by researchers with AdaptiveMobile Security.
“Simjacker has been further exploited to perform many other types of attacks against individuals and mobile operators such as fraud, scam calls, information leakage, denial of service and espionage,” said researchers with AdaptiveMobile Security in a post breaking down the attack, released Thursday.
They said they “observed the hackers vary their attacks, testing many of these further exploits. In theory, all makes and models of mobile phone are open to attack as the vulnerability is linked to a technology embedded on SIM cards.”
The attack stems from a technology in SIM cards called S@T Browser (short for SIMalliance Toolbox Browser). This technology, which is typically used for browsing through the SIM card, can be used for an array of functions such as opening browsers on the phone as well as other functions like setting up calls, playing ring tones and more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @10:29AM (3 children)
This is bad if you are the target of a nation state. Do you work for the EFF? Travel to China? etc.? Then you may have exposed yourself and others to risk.
Joe Rural who never leaves town has little exposure from this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @10:36AM
Pull the SIMs. Travel in airplane mode only.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @10:42AM (1 child)
Just because this particular attacker only used it against high profile targets doesn't mean it can *only* be used against high profile targets (or that those targets somehow don't matter).
Now that the cat is out of the bag, it can potentially be used against anybody, for anything. The question is just what can it do, and can it be fixed? Tracking locations isn't that interesting for most attackers. Google already does it and hardly anyone cares. Intercepting calls, maybe. Intercept enough calls and you'll dig up something juicy, blackmailers could use it. Playing ring tones, an obnoxious prank but not really much value to criminals there either.
Probably the most useful thing ordinary criminals could do with this is hacking SMS to bypass two-factor authentication that uses SMS as one of the factors (of course there are already ways to do it, but this might be easier).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 14 2019, @03:39AM
Well, criminals - per the original release 2 years ago - would convert to cash by making targets call or sms pay-to-reach numbers. That's such a direct cash conversion that criminal elements will almost certainly not try for anything more complex.
High value targets, per above, are the exception. If you're an oil exec you should be wary of local paramilitaries trying to get you, and this would be one way they would track a number's location. Etc etc.
Low value targets are simply not worth dedicating time and resources to extract from, unless it's done en masse.