Collaborate Disseminate
These days, we’re blessed with cellular data networks that span great swathes of the Earth. By and large, they’re used to watch TV shows and argue with strangers online. However, they’re also a great tool to use to interact with hardware in remote locations, particularly mobile ones where a wired …read more
Continue reading Basics Of Remote Cellular Access – Choosing a Modem
With its constant siren song of distraction and endless opportunity for dopamine hits, a smartphone can cause more problems than it solves. The simple solution would be a no-nonsense flip phone, but that offers zero points for style. So why not build your own rotary dial pocket cellphone?
Of course, …read more
Continue reading Simplify Your Life with This Pocket Rotary Cellphone
SIM cards are all around us, and with the continuing growth of the Internet of Things, spawning technologies like NB-IoT, this might as well be very literal soon. But what do we really know about them, their internal structure, and their communication protocols? And by extension, their security? To shine …read more
Although hard to believe in the age of cheap IMSI-catchers, “subscriber location privacy” is supposed to be protected by mobile phone protocols. The Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) protocol provides location privacy for 3G, 4G, and 5G connections, and it’s been broken at a basic enough level that three successive generations of a technology have had some of their secrets laid bare in one fell swoop.
When 3G was developed, long ago now, spoofing cell towers was expensive and difficult enough that the phone’s International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) was transmitted unencrypted. For 5G, a more secure version based on …read more
Continue reading 5G Cellphone’s Location Privacy Broken Before It’s Even Implemented
An attorney in the infamous 2015 Jeep hack predicts that more lawsuits related to IoT security are looming in the future. Continue reading Podcast: IoT Firms Face a ‘Tidal Wave’ of Lawsuits, Attorney Explains
It’s hard to believe, but the Raspberry Pi has now been around long enough that some of the earliest Pi projects could nearly be considered bonafide vintage hacks at this point. A perfect example are some of the DIY Raspberry Pi smartphone projects that sprung up a few years back. Few of them were terribly practical to begin with, but even if you ignore the performance issues and bulkiness, the bigger problem is they relied on software and cellular hardware that simply isn’t going to cut it today.
Which was exactly the problem [Dylan Radcliffe] ran into when he wanted …read more
My friend is trying to ascertain if a form completed online was done so by her ex. If he completed an online form on a website on his phone (contract phone) using 3G connection, could that form be traced back to him having co… Continue reading Can a form I filled in online using 3G be traced to my phone?
During the early years of cell phones, lifespan was mainly limited by hardware (buttons wearing out, dropping phones, or water damage), software is a primary reason that phones are replaced today. Upgrades are often prompted by dissatisfaction with a slow phone, or manufacturers simply stopping updates to phone software after a few years at best. [Oliver Smith] and the postmarketOS project are working to fix the update problem, and have begun making progress on loading custom software onto cellphone processors and controlling their cellular modems.
Since [Tom Nardi] introduced Hackaday readers to postmarketOS, the team has made progress on compiling …read more
Continue reading Unlock & Talk: Open Source Bootloader & Modem
Do you remember the screeching of a dial-up modem as it connected to the internet? Do you miss it? Probably not, but [Erick Truter] — inspired by a forum post and a few suggestions later — turned a classic modem into a 3G Wi-Fi hotspot with the ubiquitous Raspberry Pi Zero.
Sourcing an old USRobotics USB modem — allegedly in ‘working’ condition — he proceeded to strip the modem board of many of its components to make room for the new electronic guts. [Truter] found that for him the Raspberry Pi Zero W struggled to maintain a reliable network, and …read more
I’m thinking about whether or not to get a mobile(3G/4G) broadband router, but I need to know a few things about them.
How secure are they?
If an attacker were to put up a femtocell/rogue cell tower close by, what kind of a… Continue reading General mobile broadband security questions