Mysterious Phony Cell Towers Could Be Intercepting Your Calls

Popular Science reports Mysterious Phony Cell Towers Could Be Intercepting Your Calls

To show what the CryptoPhone can do that less expensive competitors cannot, he points me to a map that he and his customers have created, indicating 17 different phony cell towers known as ‘interceptors,’ detected by the CryptoPhone 500 around the United States during the month of July alone. (The map below is from August.)  Interceptors look to a typical phone like an ordinary tower. Once the phone connects with the interceptor, a variety of ‘over-the-air’ attacks become possible, from eavesdropping on calls and texts to pushing spyware to the device.

‘Interceptor use in the U.S. is much higher than people had anticipated,’ Goldsmith says.  ‘One of our customers took a road trip from Florida to North Carolina and he found 8 different interceptors on that trip.  We even found one at South Point Casino in Las Vegas.’

Who is running these interceptors and what are they doing with the calls?  Goldsmith says we can’t be sure, but he has his suspicions.