Citizen Lab details telecom spying campaigns exploiting SS7 and Diameter

Security researchers have uncovered two separate spying campaigns that abuse weaknesses in the global telecoms infrastructure to track people's locations. Citizen Lab published a report on Thursday detailing the newly identified campaigns. The surveillance vendors behind them operated as ghost companies that pretended to be legitimate cellular providers. They piggybacked their access to telecom networks to look up the location data of their targets. The campaigns exploited vulnerabilities in the SS7 and Diameter protocols, which carriers use to exchange signalling data. One campaign had access to at least 20 telecoms networks, while the other had access to at least 10. Citizen Lab said these two campaigns are likely a small snapshot of what the researchers believe to be widespread exploitation by surveillance vendors seeking access to global phone networks.