The global network that transfers cellular signals from one carrier to another is titled Signaling System 7 (SS7). This month, multiple researchers located in Germany discovered that this technology, which was designed in the 1980s, has several serious vulnerabilities which could allow interested parties to break into the system, listen to phone calls, and intercept text messages -- even as advanced encryption tries to hide those communications from prying eyes.
The vulnerabilities, The Washington Post reports, come from functions that are built into SS7 that allow it to complete actions which do not typically alter the content of phone calls or text messages. These are functions that, for instance, allow calls to switch from one cell tower to another while callers travel down interstates in their cars. The vulnerabilities exist in such a way that a hacker stationed in America could easily pinpoint a caller in Europe, or vice versa. Once they pinpoint a caller, they could hack into the structure of SS7 and either listen directly to a call as it happens or capture the contents of an encrypted call and save it for later decryption...Read More
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