Hacker Lexicon: Stingrays, the Spy Tool the Government Tried, and Failed, to Hide
Stingrays, a secretive law enforcement surveillance tool, are one of the most controversial technologies in the government's spy kit. The stingray impersonates a legitimate cell tower to trick nearby mobile phones and other wireless communication devices, like air cards, into connecting to them and revealing their international mobile subscriber identity number. Although use of the spy technology goes back at least 20 years---the FBI used a primitive version of a stingray to track former hacker Kevin Mitnick in 1994---their use of it has grown in the last decade as mobile phones and devices have become ubiquitous. Today, they're used by the military and CIA in conflict zones---to prevent adversaries from using a mobile phone to detonate roadside bombs, for example---as well as domestically by federal agencies like the FBI, DEA and US Marshals Service, and by local law enforcement agencies. Some rogue towers will also attempt to intercept encrypted mobile communication by forcing a phone to downgrade from a 3G or 4G network connection to a 2G network---a less secure network that doesn’t authenticate cell towers to the phone and contains vulnerabilities that make it easier to decrypt secure communication.
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