0 sats \ 3 replies \ @franzap 26 Apr 2023 \ parent \ on: LTESniffer: An open-source LTE downlink/uplink eavesdropper [pdf] tech
Why does it affect phones but not hotspots?
The problem is that the device has a phone number which is often tied to your identity. It also has more telecommunication services turned on than just data download and upload and those services can be abused and also has various privacy vulnerabilities in them.
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Oh like phone calls, USSD and SMS?
Carrying a hotspot around sounds very impractical.
The ideal seems to be:
- Nokyc SIM card and/or eSIM (silent.link or airalo) – never give out this number
- Use a separate nokyc number for services that require an activation SMS (whatsapp, signal, etc), if this is a physical SIM card never load it on the same phone as it would leak the IMEI (loosely associated to your ID via the social graph) and tie it to the data SIM
- Never use the phone feature
- Bluetooth always disabled
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Definitely an improvement with the above steps. Probably best to rotate sim cards too even if you're doing all of that.
Hot spots can be about the size of a phone so it's just like carrying in your bag or a 2nd phone in your pocket, then you never have that problem.
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