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T-Mobile website bug let hackers steal data with a phone number
Up until last week, a T-Mobile website had a serious security hole that let hackers access user's email addresses, accounts and a phone's IMSI network code, according to a report from Motherboard. Attackers only needed your phone number to obtain the information, which could be used in social engineering attacks to commandeer your line, or worse.
Hacker intercepts phone calls with homebuilt $1,500 IMSI catcher, claims GSM is beyond repair
In 2009, Chris Paget showed the world the vulnerabilities of RFID by downloading the contents of US passports from the safety of his automobile. This year, he's doing the same for mobile phones. Demonstrating at DefCon 2010, the white hat hacker fooled 17 nearby GSM phones into believing his $1,500 kit (including a laptop and two RF antennas) was a legitimate cell phone base station, and proceeded to intercept and record audience calls. "As far as your cell phones are concerned, I'm now indistinguishable from AT&T," he told the crowd. The purpose of the demonstration was highlight a major flaw in the 2G GSM system, which directs phones to connect to the tower with the strongest signal regardless of origin -- in this case, Paget's phony tower. The hacker did caveat that his system could only intercept outbound calls, and that caller ID could tip off the owner of a handset to what's what, but he says professional IMSI catchers used by law enforcement don't suffer from such flaws and amateur parity would only be a matter of time. "GSM is broken," Paget said, "The primary solution is to turn it off altogether." That's a tall order for a world still very dependent on the technology for mobile connectivity, but we suppose AT&T and T-Mobile could show the way. Then again, we imagine much of that same world is still using WEP and WPA1 to "secure" their WiFi.
TurboSketch bundles SketchUp for retail
If you secretly harbor the desire to design in 3D, you've probably already downloaded and explored Google SketchUp, the free-slash-500-dollar modeling tool from our buddies on the G-team that allows you to put your virtual buildings right into Google Earth. Now, as seen at Macworld, there's an interesting product that combines the free version of SketchUp 6 with lighting and rendering modules to produce something new: TurboSketch Studio from IMSI/Design. This is a retail product (boxed and download) available in standard and pro versions for $100 and $250; the "show discount," good through the end of the month, drops the prices to $70 and $150 respectively.The IMSI crew has the vintage TurboCAD program in the stable, so this seems like a fairly natural line extension. According to the product info, this is the first retail bundle for a Google application; it's certainly the first one I can think of for the Mac. It's not shipping yet, and the IMSI website seems to be in the reorganization process, but If we can get our mitts on a review copy we'll let you know how it rolls.[via MacTech]
