SIM card hacking | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Remember the Simjacker vulnerability? Earlier this month, we reported about a critical unpatched weakness in a wide range of SIM cards, which an unnamed surveillance company has actively been exploiting in the wild to remotely compromise targeted mobile phones just by sending a specially crafted SMS to their phone numbers. If you can recall, the Simjacker vulnerability resides in a dynamic SIM toolkit, called the S@T Browser , which comes installed on a variety of SIM cards, including eSIM, provided by mobile operators in at least 30 countries. Now, it turns out that the S@T Browser is not the only dynamic SIM toolkit that contains the Simjacker issue which can be exploited remotely from any part of the world without any authorization—regardless of which handsets or mobile operating systems victims are using. WIB SIM ToolKit Also Leads To SimJacker Attacks Following the Simjacker revelation, Lakatos, a researcher at Ginno Security Lab, reached out to The Hacker News earli...

Cybersecurity researchers today revealed the existence of a new and previously undetected critical vulnerability in SIM cards that could allow remote attackers to compromise targeted mobile phones and spy on victims just by sending an SMS. Dubbed " SimJacker ," the vulnerability resides in a particular piece of software, called the S@T Browser (a dynamic SIM toolkit), embedded on most SIM cards that is widely being used by mobile operators in at least 30 countries and can be exploited regardless of which handsets victims are using. What's worrisome? A specific private company that works with governments is actively exploiting the SimJacker vulnerability from at least the last two years to conduct targeted surveillance on mobile phone users across several countries. S@T Browser , short for SIMalliance Toolbox Browser, is an application that comes installed on a variety of SIM cards, including eSIM, as part of SIM Tool Kit (STK) and has been designed to let mobile...

The problem is simple: all breaches start with initial access, and initial access comes down to two primary attack vectors – credentials and devices. This is not news; every report you can find on the threat landscape depicts the same picture.  The solution is more complex. For this article, we'll focus on the device threat vector. The risk they pose is significant, which is why device management tools like Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) are essential components of an organization's security infrastructure. However, relying solely on these tools to manage device risk actually creates a false sense of security. Instead of the blunt tools of device management, organizations are looking for solutions that deliver device trust . Device trust provides a comprehensive, risk-based approach to device security enforcement, closing the large gaps left behind by traditional device management solutions. Here are 5 of those limitations and how to ov...

Edward Snowden is back with one of the biggest revelations about the government's widespread surveillance program. The US National Security Agency ( NSA ) and British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters ( GCHQ ) hacked into the networks of the world's biggest SIM card manufacturer, according to top-secret documents given to The Intercept by former NSA-contractor-turned-whistle blower, Edward Snowden . OPERATION DAPINO GAMMA The leaked documents suggests that in a joint operation, the NSA and the GCHQ formed the Mobile Handset Exploitation Team (MHET) in April 2010, and as the name suggests, the unit was built to target vulnerabilities in cellphone. Under an operation dubbed DAPINO GAMMA, the unit hacked into a Digital security company Gemalto , the largest SIM card manufacturer in the world, and stole SIM Card Encryption Keys that are used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications. Gemalto, a huge company that operates in 85 countr...