IMSI-catcher
Sign in to saveAlso known as IMSI catcher, international mobile subscriber identity-catcher, fake base station
thumb|IMSI catcher on display at the German Museum of Technology in Berlin An international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) catcher is a telephone eavesdropping device used for intercepting mobile phone traffic and tracking location data of mobile phone users. Essentially a "fake" mobile tower acting between the target mobile phone and the service provider's real towers, it is considered a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack. The 3G wireless standard offers some risk mitigation due to mutual authentication required from both the handset and the network. However, sophisticated attacks may be able
~10 min read
Encyclopedic overview
14 sectionsContents
- Overview
- Functionalities
- Identifying an IMSI
- Tapping a mobile phone
- Passive IMSI detection
- Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS)
- Tell-tales and difficulties
- Detection and counter-measures
- Products
- See also
- External links
- Footnotes
- Further reading
- External links
thumb|IMSI catcher on display at the German Museum of Technology in Berlin An international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) catcher is a telephone eavesdropping device used for intercepting mobile phone traffic and tracking location data of mobile phone users. Essentially a "fake" mobile tower acting between the target mobile phone and the service provider's real towers, it is considered a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack. The 3G wireless standard offers some risk mitigation due to mutual authentication required from both the handset and the network. However, sophisticated attacks may be able to downgrade 3G and LTE to non-LTE network services which do not require mutual authentication.
IMSI-catchers are used in a number of countries by law enforcement and intelligence agencies, but their use has raised significant civil liberty and privacy concerns and is strictly regulated in some countries such as under the German Strafprozessordnung (StPO / Code of Criminal Procedure). Some countries do not have encrypted phone data traffic (or very weak encryption), thus rendering an IMSI-catcher unnecessary.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “IMSI-catcher” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.