Real-World SS7 Attack — Hackers Are Stealing Money From Bank Accounts
May 04, 2017
Security researchers have been warning for years about critical security holes in the Signaling System 7 (SS7) that could allow hackers to listen in private phone calls and read text messages on a potentially vast scale, despite the most advanced encryption used by cellular networks. Cellular networks, on the other hand, have consistently been ignoring this serious issue, saying that it is a very low risk for most people, as the exploitation of the SS7 flaws requires significant technical and financial investment. But some unknown hackers have just proved them wrong by recently exploiting the design flaws in the SS7 to drain victims' bank accounts, according to a report published Wednesday by German-based newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. SS7 is a telephony signaling protocol created in the 1980s by telcos and powered more than 800 telecom operators across the world, including AT&T and Verizon, to interconnect and exchange data, like routing calls and texts with one a...
