It's now cheap to wiretap Lozada and de Venecia » YugaTech

It’s now cheap to wiretap Lozada and de Venecia

According to a report, a group of hackers at the Black Hat conference in Washington D.C. claim that they’re able to hack GSM calls with equipment costing about $1,000PHP 58,686INR 84,750EUR 952CNY 7,278.

Until now, wiretapping over a GSM network is an expensive operation that only the military and the intelligence divisions have the money to do so.

With that “Crying Baby” videos on YouTube about Jun Lozada and Joey de Venecia, looks like everybody with $1,000PHP 58,686INR 84,750EUR 952CNY 7,278 cash will soon be able to afford to wiretap anyone.

Technology will always catch-up but people can always avoid it. Problem with people like Gloria/Garcillano and the Lozada-deVenecia-Abalos tandem is that they don’t know much how to be discreet and secured.

Pre-paid SIM cards are very cheap these days that if you are expecting a $130PHP 7,629INR 11,017EUR 124CNY 946 million kick-back, you can afford to buy a new SIM card and thrown it away after a phone call.

{Hat tip to BrianB, via Engadget.}

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

10 Comments

cvj says:

17 years ago

The wiretapping technology that the kidnappers used on Lozada seems to be higher end, since they are able to decrypt or at least immediately see Lozada’s SMS in plaintexst. (Unless they were bluffing.)
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op3r says:

17 years ago

Wiretapping Cellular calls is easy and inexpensive by using bearcat scanners. The only problem with it is you can only hear the uplink from the cellphone to the tower and you have to be near by the subject to do it. I mean you can only try to scan one channel and hope you get the right channel emitted by the cellphone of your subject.

But with a right equipment that can be purchased in hongkong (it comes with a laptop running windows) you can listen to the conversation. It is said that it can calculate and zoomed in to the exact channels going in and out from the cellphone to the tower. but you also have to be near the subject to be able to do it.

Disclaimer I havent tried it yet though. It was just demonstrated to me from an engineer who used to work at NTC. Oh it’s depressing when you hear somebody talking to dong i lab yu.

and by the way, I am going to post this comment to my own blog kasi mukhang blog material na sya :D and Ill just more info na lang sa blog ko :D
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jhay says:

17 years ago

Yup disposable phones like the ones used in the latest Jason Bourne movie, Bourne Ultimatum. Simple technology used in a very, very smart way.
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op3r says:

17 years ago

doesnt matter if you use a different cellphone or change cellphone all the time kung channel na ang tinatap.
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BrianB says:

17 years ago

Gifi is here

http://www.pmptoday.com/2008/02/22/gifi-is-faster-than-wifi/

This is only one year away and could revolutionize entertainment and how we store information.
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BrianB says:

17 years ago

BruanBoy getting racially attacked at Gawker. This is why the Internet s great

http://gawker.com/5003058/marc-jacobs-wrapped-around-finger-of-this-gay-filipino-blogger
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Mike Lopez says:

17 years ago

Video doesn’t seem to play anymore…
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LiNTEK says:

17 years ago

Its in the news since Feb 20, although it is not yet proven if the 64-bit encryption called A5/1 being used in GSM has been already decrypted.
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