• utopiah@lemmy.ml
    6·
    1 day ago

    why cell phones don’t authenticate the towers they connect to.

    I believe it’s because they assume it’s not necessary because it was until now

    • prohibitively expensive, but now a “tower” is less than 2k EUR e.g. https://www.crowdsupply.com/ukama/ukama
    • prohibitively complex, see above, namely you don’t need to be a TelCo engineer to get it going
    • probably illegal, namely you needed (and I bet still need in most places) wireless band allocation before you could deploy anything

    … so I imagine there was no authentication because there was no practical threat beside few “fun” examples in CCC or DEF Con.

    • mkwt@lemmy.world
      3·
      22 hours ago

      The use of Stingray by US law enforcement has been challenged on grounds that the law enforcement agencies have no spectrum license. Those challenges seem not to have found success.

      On the other hand, prisons in the US have been stopped from operating cell phone jammers on prison grounds, on the same complaint of no spectrum license.