How secret is it really if it's not a simulator but a real trailer-mounted base station with the AT&T logo plain to see?
Well, not so easy to see if you saw the one that I did tucked into an overgrown lot for a few short weeks.
If you look for "cell on wheels" equipment you can see some of these for sale or rent, expected to be used for remote areas, backup systems, or special events. All of these have "towers" of some kind. Radio people have long been aware of the increased broadcast reach which can be dramatic from raising the antenna only a few feet. Why wouldn't you?
Not the one they had here, even though it looked quite generic I can find no picture anything like it.
Definitely a "low-profile" custom portable with fixed cellular antennae right on top of the trailer, which was small enough to pull behind a full-size car or pickup. No tower whatsoever or any provision to raise the distinct cellular antennae above any obstructions. No satellite dish, pure cellular. Big generator enough to supply plenty of RF power.
Plus it was under guard 24/7 with a police vehicle barely maintaining line of sight while parked on a little-used street nearby. You wouldn't want somebody to drive up and tow it away when nobody was looking, these have got to be expensive. Sometimes there would be two SUVs from different agencies, perhaps during shift change or maybe even courtesy donut delivery.
This was within shouting distance of Interstate-10 in Houston, where all kinds of traffic passes when traveling from coast-to-coast across the southern US. There was definitely no way to see this mighty little non-tower from the freeway even if you knew it was there.
But it surely interfered with my phone whenever I was nearby and that phone was not on AT&T either.
This cellsite reached strongly across all lanes of the the freeway and them some. Just driving by on I-10 you would come closer to the actual antennae than if you were at the base of a regular cell tower.
You probably weren't supposed to know, so never mind, nothing to see here.
Your phone can ping a base station several miles from you, so there is no need to camouflage a fake base station near you, it can be a hundred yards/meters away on a roof.
And a fake base station does not have to be a piece of bulky equipment. You can have one in your pocket, in this case you just have to be physically close to the people you want to identify (by their IMSI).
https://www.eff.org/wp/gotta-catch-em-all-understanding-how-...
So it's kind of the equivalent of naming your wifi network "FBI Surveillance Truck"?
Paywalled, so I can’t read it. But going off the intro - aren’t phones secure enough to not connect to a random unauthorized cell tower? Or to leak unencrypted data to it?
The article said a "cell simulator" was perhaps used, but they are unsure.
https://www.eff.org/wp/gotta-catch-em-all-understanding-how-...
When I worked in this area 20 years ago that was called a fake base station, and there were even commercial products that anyone could buy. Then (in France) it was forbidden by law.
There are rumors that police still use them.
The article says that it does not enable connections, but instead that the base station requires IMSI from the phones.
That could mean multiple things. It could be simply logging all devices, searching for specific devices to alert law enforcement or waiting for specific device to trigger some sort of process while keeping it connected.