ISI accused of intercepting mobile calls and passing on to terrorists

[bhangra12345]

The Sun Online - News: Taliban terrorises RAF families

Taliban terrorises RAF families

Phone ban ... Our Boys in Afghanistan

By TOM NEWTON DUNN
Defence Editor
August 22, 2007

COMMENT ON THIS STORY


TALIBAN fanatics terrorised the wife of an RAF officer by phoning her and saying: “You’ll never see your husband alive — we have just killed him.”

Rebels in Afghanistan are targeting British forces’ families with hate calls after tapping into Our Boys’ mobile phones.

The tearful wife rang the RAF fearing the worst after receiving the midnight call — and was told her husband was safe and well.

But the Taliban calls are a sick new plot to destroy morale, and British forces in Afghanistan have now been BANNED from using mobiles.

Army chiefs believe extremists are using sophisticated eavesdropping equipment to trace home numbers when forces call their loved ones in Britain.

Intelligence analysts have tracked the hate calls to numbers in Pakistan, a hotbed for Islamic extremism and the Taliban’s prime recruiting ground.

Pakistan’s notorious ISI spy agency — a known supporter of the Taliban — is believed to be intercepting Our Boys’ calls. It is also feared the Taliban may be getting intercept information from Iran.

Now all British troops’ welfare calls have to be made on secure military phone lines. But squaddies are fuming as they are only allowed 30 minutes’ call time each week.

One senior officer said: “We assume these days that every conversation over mobile phones is being heard by our enemies.

“They have some pretty powerful friends and allies, who are giving them some very sophisticated help. They will use that information in any way they can to damage us, whether it is physically or mentally.”

Hate calls are the latest tactic in the ever-more sophisticated war raging in Afghanistan’s lawless south.

A British forces spokesman in Afghanistan confirmed the hate calls, adding: “We are fully aware of the security implications of using personal mobile phones in Afghanistan and have therefore imposed a ban on their use to protect individuals and their families.”

The MoD confirmed that families of troops in Iraq have also suffered from “nuisance calls” in the past year.

 

[Awesome]

loooool what absolute crap.

Taliban's latest weapon - BEING MEAN!

Oh and ISI came up with this strategy and is a KNOWN supporter of Taliban? I bet a lot of eavesdropping equipment can be bought off ebay. Just google for it!

 

[blain2]

Another load of Bull ****!!!!

This ISI is turning into something out of this world....moronic reporting...like its really that hard to buy eavesdropping gear on the blackmarket for a militia that is totally dependent on such market.

The British troops are a bunch of morons for using unsecured communications gear.

Here is one for the Brits from their very own The Guardian. Maybe this idiot Tom "Dunce" should be sent the following link to let him know that its not very difficult to intercept mobile calls:

How do you tap a phone?

* Alok Jha
* The Guardian
* Thursday July 31 2003

Shockingly easily. If you thought that your phone conversations were secure, think again. Covertly listening in on phone calls is a doddle if you know how. It may be illegal to listen in on other people's calls but a loophole in the law allows the inexpensive technology to be freely sold in stores across the UK, as privacy groups have warned this week.

"It's almost as easy as plugging in something to an electrical outlet, that's the scary part about it," says Grant Haber, president of American Innovations, manufacturers of covert and counter-surveillance equipment.

Telephones are very simple devices. A microphone converts your voice into electrical pulses, which are then relayed through a wire out of your home and through several telephone exchanges on the way to the person you are speaking to. At any point in this line, somebody can simply attach a device to the wires which will convert the electrical information back into sound.

At its simplest, this device can be another telephone. More sophisticated bugs convert the electrical current into radio waves and transmit the information to a receiver - usually a van parked somewhere near the transmitter.

Mobile phones are more difficult to intercept, but it's still relatively easy to do. For around £250 you can buy equipment that allows you to tune in to any calls going on in your area.

"A normal mobile telephone isn't actually secure," says Anthony Constantinides, professor of communications and signal processing at Imperial College. "There is no encoding procedure that actually secures such conversations."

The digital mobiles in use today are encrypted but the codes all conform to international standards so that phones can work overseas. "Anybody can undo the encoding," concludes Constantinides.

Another common way of intercepting mobile calls is to fool the handset into thinking that your transmitter is its local base station. The user then communicates through you, allowing you to listen in. The only drawback for a potential hacker is that they have to be in the same cell - the geographic area served by a single base station - as you listen in.

To get around this, satellites can be used to hone in on any particular spot. "Satellites can transmit information much in the same way as a base station," says Constantinides.

And there are easier ways for governments, for example, to listen in to phone conversations - such as asking the phone operator to patch them in.

How do you tap a phone? | Science | The Guardian


I am sure Taliban are hurting for £250...

 

[MastanKhan]

Hi,

Specially with the bumper crop they been having for the last few years, the talibans have no shortage of funds and now the extra money that came in from the release of korean hostages.

 

[PakSniper]

Lol, this story is a good laugh once you get home from work and want something to relax and read, ISI helping, ROFL.

What next? Marry Poppin's jumped the moon!

 

[Shivakumar]

Mobile phones are more difficult to intercept, but it's still relatively easy to do. For around £250 you can buy equipment that allows you to tune in to any calls going on in your area.

"A normal mobile telephone isn't actually secure," says Anthony Constantinides, professor of communications and signal processing at Imperial College. "There is no encoding procedure that actually secures such conversations."

The digital mobiles in use today are encrypted but the codes all conform to international standards so that phones can work overseas. "Anybody can undo the encoding," concludes Constantinides.

I disagree with this part. Though the mobile phones use international standards, they use high level of encryption. The old analog TDMA phone days are gone. Now the handset and base station uses a secure connection and it is not easy to decrypt them without high computing power like super computers or lots of computers that do the task in parallel.

The GSM and CDMA standards address the issue of security which is a problem in the wireless comunication, since anyone can listen to the signal in the air. So, these standards give higher priority to the security.

So, without a support from state agencies such as ISI or others, the Al Quaeda can not do this task.

Another common way of intercepting mobile calls is to fool the handset into thinking that your transmitter is its local base station. The user then communicates through you, allowing you to listen in. The only drawback for a potential hacker is that they have to be in the same cell - the geographic area served by a single base station - as you listen in.

Absolute crap. The SIM cards don't store your phone number. Simply saying your handset is unaware of your phone number. Your SIM has an SIM ID and an subscribers ID. These are mapped to you phone number in the base station and forwarded as caller id.

So, without knowing those information, your system can't act as base station.

Also, the base stations are securely connected to the phone network. So, your system can't forward the call to the destination.

And there are easier ways for governments, for example, to listen in to phone conversations - such as asking the phone operator to patch them in.

Thats true. Most government agencies still depend on this way. I doubt that Taliban or AlQuada have such powerfull influence to infiltrate in to mobile operators.

So, at least there is some help from some state run agencies such as ISI.

 

[dabong1]

The sun newspaper is a joke,i live in england and i can tell you that it is a newspaper that the least educated people in england read.
It is famous for having nude woman on page 3 and is not know for its journalism.

 

[IceCold]

The sun newspaper is a joke,i live in england and i can tell you that it is a newspaper that the least educated people in england read.
It is famous for having nude woman on page 3 and is not know for its journalism.

Tell bhangra too about it.......alot of coping and pasting is being done of things full of crap these days.

 

[dabong1]

Tell bhangra too about it.......alot of coping and pasting is being done of things full of crap these days.

What do you expect from an indian but half truths and lie's when it comes to pakistan.