as of my knowledge, SS7 is the remedy for inband signalling what was abused widely. nevertheless, SS7 is widely known to be vulnerable and nearly 50 years old. since the global telephony system is impossible to get migrated to anything more clever and better shortly, limiting access to well behaving entities is (IMHO) a good approach.
network operators HAVE limited access to SS7 for the end user already long ago - I remember it was possible to do nasty things in the early ISDN days sending spoofed messages through the d-Kanal even for end users. this was quickly addressed.
the current incident is about someone with deep knowledge to SS7 and it's sensitive spots. that guy provided access to SS7 to (any?) parties as a payed service and (it would not surprise me) consulting about how to exploit it.
you won't provide razor blades to toddlers for a good reason - but you can't demand to make razor blades safe for toddlers. ;-)
for my understanding, he should have take measures to prevent abusing his service by his customers. since (some) of his customers only used his service for exploiting and he got paid for providing it, he did not seem to 'have a word' with that exploiting customers, instead money was more important.
There are (really) a lot of infrastructure services that rely on old insecure technology - just think of tracking 'Santa Claus' on flight radar. this is funny - but in the end just sending spoofed data to ACARS.
some infrastructure implementations are too big to allow exploits - and to old and widely spread to make changes. SS7 does (as of my knowledge) not have any security features. limiting access is mandatory.
If I'm technically wrong about SS7 and other options I would gladly learn about alternatives.
Schönes WE ;-)
Ralph
----- Am 19. Mai 2023 um 22:42 schrieb f_sfetea--- via swinog swinog@lists.swinog.ch:
Hmm, instead of securing their networks and pushing for better security standards they'll cut access to one fish. Is that an ideal strategy? Some other bigger meaner fish will still use those vulnerabilities. I was wondering if the GSMA is or should regularly perform security audits.
https://www.gsma.com/security/gsma-mobile-security-research-acknowledgements...
Or perhaps award publicly visible badges of honor to those mobile networks that are not vulnerable to similar attacks.
I mean how many companies do we know? that publicly stated: Hello our mobile users btw. we fixed those vulnerabilities in our network! You should now be better protected.
I never got any such information from any of my providers. Did you?
Beste Grüsse, Regards si s-auzim de bine Florin Sfetea
Today's Topics:
- Re: Sicherheit von SS7 - mit Schweiz-Bezug (Ralph Krämer)