A new 5G security flaws hits the news
Surveillance through FaceTime and Facebook stops..
at nothing to get your data.
all that coming up now on ThreatWire
Greetings! I'm Shannon Morse and this is..
ThreatWire for February 5th 2019
Your summary of the threats towards Security, Privacy and..
Internet Freedom
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and now onto the news.
A flaw was recently discovered in the new 5G protocol..
that would allow a third party to use IMSI catchers-like devices
to snoop on the data on this new carrier protocol
4 researchers over at SINTEF Digital Norway, ETH Zurich Switzerland..
and Technical University Berlin, Germany..
discovered the vulnerability, which affects not only 5G..
but it's also backward compatible with 3G and 4G protocol as well
It affects the authentication and key agreement which is..
AKA for short. And that's the technique..
between your phone and a cellular network
that allows them to communicate securely
AKA was suppose to negotiate and establish a key exchange..
between the phone and the carrier to encrypt the link.
5G AKA was suppose to thwart IMSI catchers..
but the vulnerability opens up a potential entry point for newer devices to spy.
Data about user's activities, such as number of texts,
or calls received and sent..
could be used by an attacker to profile a victim.
And if you take your phone away from the signal of a newer IMSI catcher,
well, the moment that you come back within its vicinity
It can pickup where it stops, and continue that tracking.
So, this could be used to track political figures..
or officials and targeted attacks.
Not only to see amount of calls,
but also to track physical location between fake base stations
The researchers responsively disclose their findings to 3GPP..
which is the 3rd Generation Partnership Project and GSMA..
and the parties are taking steps to remedy the situation..
before the end of 2019..
when we will surely see 5G start up in the public.
Last week, a major bugs surfaced by 9to5mac detailing..
how iPhone users could use FaceTime group chats to snoop on..
audio from other phones, without their knowledge.
All someone would have to do is call another user
using FaceTime and they would immediately
hear the audio from the receiver's phone before they even..
accept it or rejected the call.
The ringer rings as normal so the receiver would know someone was calling..
but they would not be able to tell if you could hear their audio..
before they actually picked up. Many iPhone users took to..
social media expressing their concerns about the ease of use of this vulnerability.
Put simply, you would just have to start a FaceTime video call to an iPhone contact,
and then, when it's dialling, you swipe up from the bottom and you tap "Add Person"
You add your own phone number to the add person screen..
and then you start a group FaceTime call with yourself and the audio of the contact
Now, to make matter a lot worse, this flaw could also be used to snoop..
on the video feed of the user.
To do this, all user would have to do is press the "Power" button while on the lock screen
which also would send the video to the caller
and according to BuzzFeed news, pressing "Volume" down..
did very similar to this situation.
While that underlying cause was not specified,
security researchers think that bad logic coding of the group FaceTime processes could be the problem
After this news broke, it was discovered that a 14 years old boy found this flaw..
over a week prior to the news article while playing Fortnite with his friends.
And he just wanted to chat with them.
The boy stumbled upon the bug on January 19th while trying to initiate..
that group FaceTime call.
His mother reported this problem to Apple through a series of posts and emails but..
to no avail. It appears that Apple knew or..
they should have known about the problem for a week before actually getting around to fixing it.
Now, well they did respond to one of her reports on January 23rd..
It was not clear to the mother that they were actually going to fix it.
Apple disabled the group FaceTime feature on January 29th and it has been..
listed as temporarily unavailable on their systems status page as you can see here.
Before they disabled that feature altogether, the best option was just to disable FaceTime.
and the iOS settings and unfortunately that was the only option.
Apple is now experiencing legal concerns related to this bug.
They have been sued by Houston based lawyer..
who claimed someone's eavesdropped on an important conversation.
NY attorney general, Letitia James has also initiated..
a formal investigation into the bug.
A software patch will be made available to users this week in iOS 12.1.4.
To update, simply go to your Settings > General > Software Updates
Well, Facebook is not out of this security headlines YET. No surprise.
Facebook uses an Apple program called..
the Developer Enterprise program to create and manage apps that..
are'nt found in the Apple Apps Store.
But are available for download. This is usually used by companies..
to create internal apps used for internal capabilities.
Facebook use the Developer Enterprise program to create and distribute..
an application to the masses though,
that allows them to obtain user data, while paying that user only $20/month
Now, since Apple has pretty strict privacy rules for their Apps store..
this is a loophole that Facebook was able to take advantage of..
to track users' data. It's called the Facebook "Research" app..
and they've used Root Certificates to collect data on users.
This could be browsing history, time spent on apps/sites, purchases made,
private messages, location data and network data. Just to name a few.
Now, since "Facebook Research" also enabled their own VPN network
This also gave them the ability to view..
anything that would be normally kept private under a VPN services.
Now, since this is in violation of Apple's guidelines.
Apple immediately revoked Facebook's Enterprise Certificates
which also broke some of Facebook internal team apps.
Like Beta versions of apps from Instagram, Messenger and the Facebook app.
Those would also stopped working..
since those were all apart of the Enterprise Program
Now, after some time Apple restored Facebook access to the Enterprise program
and your version of the social media apps if downloaded through the App Store are not affected.
So, don't worry.
Now, with Facebook, came similar news from Google as well.
Google Screenwise Meter app was also..
available in this format that allow them to analyze and monitor user data.
Google removed their application from..
download and made a statement regarding the iOS apps saying that..
it was a mistakes on their part.
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WELL.. and with that, I'm Shannon Morse and I will see you on the Internet.